1810 TO JUNE, 1812

N.B.—Written in 1818, 1819, 1820, 1821. Transcribed in 1824.

Lord Grenville, who lived near Windsor, had very early intelligence of the King’s disorder; I think the Prince of Wales apprised him of the character and probable duration of the complaint. It had been intended to prorogue Parliament, which stood for November 1, but not for the dispatch of business. The King was too ill to sign the Commission for that day, and the two Houses on their meeting _adjourned_ for a fortnight, and continued by successive adjournments to avoid the transaction of all business till December 13. The physicians had in the meanwhile been examined before the Privy Council, the report of the evidence had been laid before the two Houses on November 29, and the news of the King’s amendment and probable recovery was immediately afterwards very sedulously and generally circulated.

The Prince of Wales cautiously or scrupulously abstained from all political concert with the Opposition, till official communications should be made to him from Ministers or from Parliament. He pushed that delicacy so far that he did not see Mr. Sheridan, who being to the full as desirous of appearing, as of being, his adviser, was ludicrously anxious to cancel so mortifying a circumstance. I was at some pains to inform both Lord Grey and Lord Grenville of this circumstance, but it made them more negligent of Mr. Sheridan. In every rational view of the subject it should have furnished a fresh motive, as well as facilities, for fixing him in their interests. The goodwill of a man, alike brilliant in society and in Parliament and very formidable at Court, might have been propitiated and perhaps purchased at a very cheap rate, without any sacrifice of principle or any surrender of dignity. A word of cordiality, a mark of confidence, or even the homage of outward civility would have done it; Mr. Sheridan, apt to resent slights more than injuries, was, with all his impatience of real obligations, very sensible of petty kindnesses.[78] A small favour soothed his vanity, a great one offended his pride. Incapable of gratitude, he was yet never hard to please. His mortification at the Prince’s neglect would have rendered him more open to little attentions. But Lord Grenville never saw him, and Lord Grey was hardly civil to him when he did; the first, partly from a total want of habits with him, and partly from a certain austerity of manners which indisposed [him] to cultivate the society of dissolute men; the latter, from an honest but somewhat over-charged disdain of all trickery and artificial characters.

If Mr. Sheridan regarded his interests only, he must have perceived that favour with the Prince could alone promote them in a Ministry formed by those two Lords. If, as is most probable, he was on this, as on other occasions, swayed chiefly by his vanity, he must have panted for the opportunity of gratifying it, by making those who had slighted him so unmercifully feel his importance. When the Prince soon afterwards took an avowed interest in the proceedings of Parliament, and communicated to the two Lords his intention of employing them in the formation of his Ministry, he resumed his usual habits with Mr. Sheridan. No attempt to gain the confidence of the latter was even then made by Lord Grey or Lord Grenville. The arrangement suggested by himself seemed to disprove any sinister designs against the new Administration; yet it was coldly received, and, I believe, peremptorily rejected by Lord Grenville. Before the appointments were settled, and as if to relieve the new Government from the painful necessity of excluding such abilities from their Cabinet, Mr. Sheridan applied for the Secretaryship of Ireland. That office would have removed him during the greater part of the year from London. It bespoke, consequently, no premeditated design of securing by assiduity that much-dreaded ascendancy over the mind of the Prince, which, when admitted to his society, his long intimacy, delightful conversation, and exquisite wit, ever subservient to his purposes, enabled him to assume. There were indeed other and grave objections to the appointment. Perhaps they were insurmountable. But Lord Grenville and Lord Grey showed upon that and every other occasion a repugnance to consult or to court him, and possibly a disinclination to serve him, which he was too keen-sighted not to perceive and too vain not to resent.

I have related these circumstances somewhat out of the order of time, that I may not interrupt my narrative of events, which flowed from them but did not occur till a later period. Lord Grey did not conceal his chagrin at the inaction of the Prince during the first six weeks of his father’s incapacity. In the only audience I had with the Prince of Wales, he told me that he wished to avoid all reproach, but adhered firmly to his opinions of 1788. He let me see, however, that meddling tale-bearers had reported incautious expressions of Lord Grey to him. He mentioned him, nevertheless, with regard; and though he quoted a foolish song of Captain Morris, in which Grey had been styled, “The youth who tossed his head so high,” or some such phrase, he spoke of his impetuosity in terms not inconsistent with kind intentions or even with friendship and affection. Without saying anything positive, he was always very dexterous in conveying an impression to those he talked with.[79] Mine on this occasion was, that he would place his Government in the hands of the Whigs, but that he would take his own time and way of doing it, and that he had been nettled at the observations to which his delay had given rise, or in which their impatience had indulged.

An expression of Lord Grey had been officiously reported to the Prince as a communication to him. “If,” said Lord Grey, “the Prince would but hold up his finger, he would have everything his own way.” But the Prince conveyed to him and to Lord Grenville, through Mr. Adam, his determination not to see either of them. He hinted, at the same time, that they might serve him, by asking questions in Parliament concerning the steps taken by the Ministers to apprise him of the state of the King’s health and of the public affairs. To Mr. Adair,[80] who had injudiciously sought and obtained an audience, he spoke with acrimony of the two Lords and of the late Administration (Lord Moira and myself excepted). He seemed hurt at the impatience expressed at his supineness, and said, “They think me a nervous man; by God! they shall find me an _Homme de nerfs_,” with much that betrayed irritation and dislike.

This was early in December. Lord Grey set off soon afterwards to Lady Grey, who was brought to bed in Northumberland. The Prince began to speak with less reserve of his resentment at Mr. Perceval’s conduct. Some manœuvres, and among them the introduction of the Chancellor[81] to the King as a _medical expedient_, practised by the Queen, the Ministers, and the physicians, without any concert with the Prince, greatly exasperated him. He now saw Mr. Sheridan frequently, and those connected with his Household avowed their intention of voting against Mr. Perceval’s resolutions. They no longer scrupled to consult with the Whigs on the means of securing an attendance. Their efforts, however, did little against the first resolutions, which related to the mode of supplying the deficiency of the Regal power, and which were carried on December 20, 1810, by 269 to 157.

In the debate Mr. Perceval displayed some talent and more spirit. Several of the Grenville branch of Opposition, as well as Mr. Canning, voted with Ministers; they both, however, announced an intention of opposing some, if not all, the restrictions which Mr. Perceval meant to impose. The reverence for a precedent from which Mr. Pitt had derived popularity in 1788, together with some faint hopes of the King’s recovery, outweighed the influence of Carlton House and the strong objections to a clumsy and unconstitutional contrivance. The latter were nevertheless enforced in an argumentative speech of Mr. Horner, which remained unanswered in debate, and is not much weakened by the written but unspoken oration attributed in _Cobbett’s Register_ to Mr. Croker. On the same day Mr. Perceval apprised the Prince of Wales officially of his intended motion. The Prince concerted his answer with Mr. Sheridan, and the Princes of the Blood Royal signed and printed a sort of remonstrance to the measure.[82]

In the House of Lords, Lord Grenville supported the resolutions; Lord Grey was absent. The management of the debate on the part of Opposition fell on Lord Lansdowne and myself, and we flattered ourselves that the constitutional objections to the strange proceeding resorted to were as clearly stated and as forcibly urged in our speeches and protest as they had been either in 1788 or in the House of Commons. For the learning and research I was chiefly indebted to Mr. Allen, who, assisted by some letters written by Doctor Lawrence and printed in _Cobbett’s Register_ in 1803 and 1804, furnished me and Mr. Horner with many views of the subject and precedents from our early history strictly in point, which had escaped the researches of Lord Loughborough, Mr. Burke, and Mr. Hargrave in 1788.

The subsequent resolutions in favour of restricting the Prince Regent were carried by smaller majorities. The House of Commons had been called over. The prospect of the Prince’s accession to power grew more certain; his hostility to Mr. Perceval more apparent. There were, therefore, stronger motives for resisting the second than the first string of resolutions. They passed, however, though by scanty majorities, such as 24, 16, 19. The fifth resolution was amended in a particular of some importance, on the motion of Lord Gower, by a majority of 13, the Ministry voting in the minority. Nothing remarkable occurred in the discussions. Lord Grenville’s friends did not deem it necessary to sacrifice the views of the party and the substantial object of a Government, founded on the principles they approved, to a pedantic, technical, and almost superstitious reverence for his arguments of 1788; when, if the question was the same, the circumstances of the country and the reasons of State were entirely dissimilar. Mr. Sheridan was observed to be neither brilliant in his oratory nor cordial or zealous in his conduct.

In the House of Lords, Lord Grenville allowed himself to be more harassed by former opinions than was convenient to his party purposes, or indeed at all necessary to the preservation of any reasonable or substantial consistency. In deference to an ideal, prudish, and pedantic notion of nominal rather than real consistency, he confined all his opposition to particular words. He thus enabled Lord Liverpool, after the Committee had, upon Lord Lansdowne’s motion, omitted the mention of restrictions in the first resolution, in which Lord Grenville concurred, to reconcile him to voting with Ministers on the other subsequent questions, by moving himself to omit some few words to which Lord Grenville had taken exception and having the whole in a shape which that Lord was pledged to support. Lord Liverpool seized the moment and mode of accomplishing his purpose with admirable quickness and dexterity; and as two peers, Lord Ashburton,[83] from simplicity and blind reliance on Lord Grenville, and Lord Auckland,[84] from a want of address truly unaccountable in so old a politician, followed Lord Grenville’s vote and opinion against his interests and his wishes, our small majority was lost. The resolutions passed the Committee in a shape somewhat less consistent with themselves, but sufficient to secure the objects of Mr. Perceval and the concurrence of the House of Commons.

On Committees no proxies are allowed; on the Report the Ministerialists called for them, with a hope of reinstating the words which Lord Lansdowne’s motion in the Committee had omitted. We determined to resist the use of proxies. But our objections could not arise till they were called for; they could not be called for till a division; and according to parliamentary usage, at least in the Lords, no speech can be made and no question put during a division. It followed that when our teller, Lord Lauderdale, peremptorily refused to mark them, a scene of great embarrassment ensued. We were like the characters in _The Critic_, at a “deadlock.” The altercation and confusion increased, and I am afraid I clenched my fist, and, upon a peer offering to rise, swore aloud that, “By God, no man should speak!” At length one of the tellers, who had alone the right to open their mouths, moved an adjournment during pleasure, and on the House being resumed, the discussion on the propriety of receiving proxies commenced. We insisted that none had been called for in 1788. We had little else to allege in favour of our doctrine, for the notion (however constitutional) that we were a Convention and not a Parliament, was at variance with the recent decision of the House.

Lord Stanhope,[85] however, drew a very ingenious inference from the form of a proxy, which is grounded on “_the permission of our Lord the King, that Session obtained_,” or some such words. He contended the privilege could not be exerted in a case where it was manifest from the matter in hand that the permission on which it rested could never have been given. This argument, whether plausible or really sound, was sufficient to satisfy what Lord Stanhope called “the Whig majority of Peers.” Those present deserved that appellation, and proved that “_les absents ont tort_,” by voting that the proxies, which would have placed them in a minority, were inadmissible.[86] The resolution was, I think, tenable and perhaps constitutional, but it was voted by persons who probably did not require that recommendation to make it go down. Lord Stanhope, delighted alike with the uproar and the success, embraced me with his long arms as we went downstairs, and whispered in my ear, “This, my dear _Citoyen_, is rare fun. If I could often have such nights as these, I would live in the House of Lords: it is such high fun.”

This was on January 4, 1811. On the 5th, Lord Liverpool moved back the original words of the first resolution, and they were admitted without a division. It was a singular coincidence that these debates, arising from the lunacy of the King, were attended by another monarch who had been deposed in substance, if not in form, for a similar calamity. The King of Sweden[87] was under the Throne during the greater part of these discussions.

On January 6, in compliance with commands conveyed through Mr. Adam, Lord Grenville had an audience of the Prince of Wales at Carlton House. His Royal Highness began by informing him that he must consider the communication as made jointly to him and to Lord Grey, the latter unluckily being not yet returned from Northumberland. His immediate object was advice how to frame an answer to the address which would shortly be presented to him by both Houses. He then spoke with much apparent feeling of the embarrassments of his own situation, adverted to the difficulties of forming a strong Government for the conduct of affairs in the House of Commons, condemned all exclusions of persons, and after acknowledging some personal dislike of Mr. Canning and glancing at the grounds of it, _viz._, his intimacy with the Princess, he indicated the convenience and almost recommended a coalition with him. He spoke more directly of his wish to reinstate the Duke of York, and he conversed on public and foreign measures, in the judgment of Lord Grenville, both ably and satisfactorily. There was sufficient concurrence of opinion on these topics between him and Lord Grenville to remove all apprehension of a separate will in the Court and the Ministry, should the Whigs possess the latter.

At the close of the conversation he directed Lord Grenville to consult with Lord Grey and Lord Moira, and referred to him and to them the propriety of forming a new Administration and the consideration of the means of completing it; adding, that he hoped all their arrangements might be prepared by the time he assumed the functions of Regent under the authority of the Act of Parliament. Lord Grenville, after stating generally his view of public affairs, declined entering into the details of arrangements till further communication with Lord Grey and those of his friends immediately conversant with the House of Commons; he deemed it, however, an act of fairness and duty to state explicitly his views of one subject, on which the Prince of Wales had dwelt with so much emotion and honourable feeling—the reinstatement of the Duke of York. He deplored, he said, the treatment the Duke had met with; he had almost said, could such an expression be pardoned, that he felt compassion for him, for he had been, in his judgment, misrepresented and slandered. But notwithstanding the concurrence of many of his best friends in this view of what had passed, he feared that the obstacles to the reinstatement of the Duke of York, arising from the temper of the House of Commons and from the prejudices and opinions of the great body of the public, and of the Whigs more especially, were quite insurmountable. He would cheerfully consult with others on that subject, and certainly with an earnest desire to further His Royal Highness’s wishes, but he could not conceal from him that he had little hope of finding it practicable to reinstate the Duke of York as Commander-in-Chief.

Such was the substance of that conversation as related to me by Lord Grenville himself. He lost no time in communicating the result of this audience to his friends in town; and I endeavoured on that occasion to impress on his mind the necessity of prosecuting the Spanish war, and the propriety of discountenancing by some legislative acts the disposition, too prevalent in our Courts, of harassing and if possible crushing the liberty of the press. These were the two points on which I thought our leading Whigs of that day stood most in need of admonition, and I believe Mr. Horner and Sir Samuel Romilly agreed with me.

On Wednesday, January 9, Lord Grey arrived in London. The Prince saw him next day, and was yet more communicative than he had been with Lord Grenville. The result, on the subject of the Duke of York, was nearly the same. When the Prince of Wales suggested that the accession of Mr. Canning would strengthen his new Government in the House of Commons, Lord Grey, ever artless, open, and manly, exposed the impolicy of weakening the attachment of old friends by a precarious connection with new or doubtful ones. The Prince, either designedly or accidentally, touched on a subject of some embarrassment—Lord Grenville’s auditorship.[88] He hinted at the difficulty or even impossibility of uniting it again with the Treasury. He very pertinently remarked that Lord Grenville’s recent correspondence with Mr. Perceval, in which he had scrupled to draw an order for the issue of monies upon a warrant from the Treasury, added to the embarrassment, by showing that one of these offices was in certain cases a check upon the other.

Lord Grey and Lord Grenville drew up without delay an answer to the two Houses, which was to be delivered on the 11th. The draft arrived at Carlton House as the Prince was sitting down to dinner on the 10th, and, as ill-fortune would have it, Mr. Sheridan dined with him on that day. The paper became the topic of conversation and criticism after dinner. According to the report of Mr. Adam, who was present, Mr. Sheridan inveighed against the substance and ridiculed both the composition and the authors, till the Prince swore he would not send it and requested Mr. Sheridan to alter it or to frame a new one. He seized with great avidity and emphatically approved of a remark made by that gentleman, for which, to say the truth, there was some foundation. “It was impossible,” said Sheridan, “for a man who, like Lord Grenville, had voted for the first resolutions and even for some of the most offensive restrictions, to frame such an answer as would suit a Prince who wished to convey his unequivocal disapprobation of both.” The Prince sent back the paper with many alterations and comments, and much underlined; and he directed the two Lords to improve the form, but to incorporate the substance of his interlineations and remarks into the answer.

In the meanwhile, or rather at the same moment, Mr. Adam brought this account to Lord Grey at my house in Pall Mall.[89] He related with some asperity the behaviour of Mr. Sheridan, who shortly afterwards followed him. Lord Grey, with great dignity but with much propriety and good temper, observing that it was impossible for him or Lord Grenville to be responsible for sentiments they had not written, drove off to Camelford House. Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Adam, flushed with wine and irritated by dispute, argued the question over again with considerable warmth. Mr. Sheridan at first alleged that he did not know that the two Lords had been directly and exclusively entrusted to draw up the paper; but Mr. Adam contended, and indeed proved, that Mr. Sheridan was fully aware of it. Mr. Sheridan then maintained, with some plausibility, that till they were actually Ministers they were not technically in a responsible situation, and that Lord Grenville’s circumstances not only did not confer an exclusive right to advise on such a subject, but actually disqualified him from doing so with effect or propriety. The two Lords withdrew their paper, and one of Mr. Sheridan’s composition was delivered. It expressed strongly enough, but not very happily either in thought or in language, the Prince’s disapprobation of the late proceedings.

Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, not satisfied with barely withdrawing their paper, deemed it more fair and honourable to explain, at this very early stage of their official connection with the Prince Regent, their sense of the indignity and inconvenience which might arise from the interference of unauthorised advisers in transactions for which they should be practically and constitutionally responsible. Such a declaration, however open, was bold and injudicious; for it was not absolutely called for, though it might be justified by the occasion. Yet had they explained themselves in an audience with the Prince Regent, the firmness of their tone and the soundness of the principle they had to enforce might have produced some salutary impression on His Royal Highness: though they could hardly have prevented occasional recurrence of such events with a Prince of natural levity, whose habits were formed to very familiar intercourse not only with Mr. Sheridan but with many persons much further removed from the character and capacity of ostensible advisers. But the passion for pen and ink was strong upon Lord Grenville during the whole of that season. It outweighed every other consideration. The two Lords sent a laboured remonstrance to the Prince, in which he was taken to task for his conduct. The respective duties of a Minister who advises and of a Prince who is advised were expounded in a manner highly constitutional, but not withal very conciliatory from two statesmen on the eve of their appointment.

There can be little doubt that the first use made of this paper was to show it to Mr. Sheridan. There can be as little that he, sore at the whole transaction, bitterly ridiculed the performance, and laboured to affix on the authors of it the design of riding the Prince with a sharp curb and stinging lash which they had not even the caution to conceal till they had reached the saddle. “He antedates the hatred due to power,” said Pope to Lord Cobham; and the same thought was applied in fifty different ways to his relation Lord Grenville by Mr. Sheridan, who, in venting his resentment on this unlucky affair, gave an impression of the haughty demeanour of the two Whig Lords which he could never afterwards efface from the mind of the Regent. He wrote a long narrative of what passed in a letter to me.[90]

I have dwelt more on this occurrence, because I am persuaded that it indisposed the Regent’s mind, and had a great effect in determining his subsequent conduct. He professed himself, however, so anxious to remove all misunderstanding that he condescended to come to me in the gout and to explain for near three hours at my couch side in Pall Mall the whole proceeding. He assured me that he looked forward with eagerness to the two Lords completing their arrangements; and that he was satisfied that on nothing, except the answer regarding the restrictions, he should ever wish to consult with anybody but Lord Grenville and those with whom he acted. Notwithstanding these assurances, there is reason to suspect that he complained of the two Lords to others besides Mr. Sheridan, for Lord Yarmouth[91] made some significant remarks on their imagining themselves more necessary to the Regent than they really were.

The difficulties in forming a Ministry were great. The Grenvilles desired to negotiate with Mr. Canning; others of our party, and Mr. Whitbread in particular, would never have been brought to consent to it. Lord Grenville was also unwilling either to resign his auditorship or to relinquish the Treasury. In the course of discussion on the latter point his evil genius dipped him again in pen and ink, and he argued for his profits and places in a manner which, though neither unreasonable nor unnatural, was more becoming a merchant than a statesman aspiring to power and fame. Such a man should consider even fair-earned emolument as a secondary and sometimes an incompatible object. Mr. Whitbread was not less stubborn or less offensive in his resistance to any union, direct or indirect, of the two offices. He acknowledged all danger from such a measure, either in itself or as a precedent, to be a mere chimera; he did not even dwell much on the violation of constitutional principle which it seemed to involve. The practical advantage of a Whig Administration, he owned, far outweighed all such considerations; but he had, it seemed, in public and private, held language on this and similar topics, which would expose him to the charge of inconsistency, should he acquiesce in any such arrangements. Having put a question, he said, the year before, to Mr. Perceval, whether Mr. Yorke received his salary as teller while First Lord of the Admiralty, and having been answered in the negative, he could never bring himself to defend Lord Grenville’s receiving the salary of auditor while he was First Lord of the Treasury.

After the matter had been discussed among us with great pertinacity and some asperity on both sides, it was at last compromised, I know not how, by the two Lords. Other difficulties in the distribution of places no doubt occurred, but many I have forgotten, and many never reached me. Gout continued to confine me to my bed for some time. Lord Grey acted throughout with judgment, temper, and firmness: he gave no reasonable cause of dissatisfaction to recent and younger partisans; he conciliated and gratified the old friends of Mr. Fox.

I had some scruples about the Spanish war. Lord Grenville, from economy, Lord Grey, from a propensity to criticise military movements, were disposed to contemplate it with less hope, and possibly with less zeal, than myself. But as they agreed on the immediate necessity of supplying Lord Wellington’s army with reinforcements and vigorously supporting the plans in which he was engaged, I saw no reason for reviving the shades of difference we might have had on the origin or early progress of the war, nor for exacting a previous concurrence of opinion in certain contingencies which had not yet occurred. I was willing to take my chance of the zeal which the conduct and management of the war would inevitably have inspired in such ardent and sanguine minds as Lord Grey’s and Mr. Whitbread’s.

While, however, delays occurred in forming a new Ministry, those in possession did not remain inactive. Favoured by the Queen, and aided by at least one of the physicians, they worked with great assiduity and address on the affections, the fear, the vanity, and, some say, the pecuniary interests of the Prince of Wales. At one time, the King’s disorder had taken a new turn, seemed to hold out great hopes of a speedy recovery, or was likely to terminate ere long in a restoration of his intellect or in death. At another, the pressure of public business called for a stable Government, and the financial operations of the State could not be conducted with safety or advantage till the persons entrusted with the confidence of the executive Government were known. The effect of a clamour against Roman Catholics, the popularity which Mr. Perceval might give to the Princess, the consequences of any change on the King’s health, and, above all, the reproaches to which the Prince would thereupon be exposed, were artfully insinuated by the partisans of the Ministers and the Queen, and perhaps really felt by others who had more direct influence over his mind as well as the opportunity of impressing their views in softer moments. The Minister was admitted to the presence of the King, and the Queen wrote instantly an account of the interview to her son. I was not allowed to copy the letter, but the substance of it was as follows: “To assure her dearest son that she was persuaded he would be highly gratified to hear that the King was improved in health; that he had seen Mr. Perceval, who was much satisfied with his whole appearance; that he had held a reasonable conversation, and inquired with great interest about all that had been done; that he had expressed himself with kindness towards the Prince, and pleased at his conduct _pending the business_.” She added that she “avoided all delay in conveying such agreeable information.”

The Prince, though aware of the artifice, and even diverted at the formal expression of, _pending the business_, which he shrewdly observed was “no woman’s phrase, but a lawyer’s,” was nevertheless much agitated and intimidated by the letter. Such fears were said to be improved upon by Sir Henry Halford,[92] who repeated observations to the King, affected to dread the consequences of any change of Ministers, not only on the disorder, but on the life, of the King, and is much belied if he did not convert his professional access to the Prince of Wales to purposes purely political. The Duke of Cumberland observed in a letter, “Vaughan (Sir Henry Halford) has behaved nobly by us all.” I cannot vouch for the fact of his active interference, but accounts of it reached me through channels worthy of credit, and they were generally believed.

On January 21, 1811, Lord Grey and Lord Grenville informed the Prince Regent by letter that they were ready to undertake the Government, but advised him to institute a fresh inquiry into the state of the King’s health; and if it should appear probable that His Majesty would be able to resume the exercise of the Regal functions _within a few weeks_, then and in that case, they recommended him not to change the Ministers; though they disclaimed all approbation, much less adoption, of their system of policy being implied from their recommendation, or from the Prince Regent’s compliance with it by continuing them in office. If the result of the inquiry was different, they then repeated their readiness to submit without delay to the Prince Regent the appointments which they should recommend to His Royal Highness.

On the evening of the 25th, the Prince Regent, after stating to Lord Moira, Lord Hutchinson, and Mr. Adam the agitation of his mind and imploring them to do justice to his feelings, sent the two last to Camelford House to inform Lord Grey and Lord Grenville that, in consequence of the report of physicians and the probability of the King’s recovery, he had resolved not to remove the Ministers; he expressed his hopes that the two Lords would approve of his determination and his sense of the disinterested as well as judicious advice they had given. He afterwards saw them, Mr. Ponsonby, myself, and others; referred his determination merely and exclusively to the report of the King’s health, which, whether true or false, would, he said, subject him to so much reproach if he did anything to aggravate his disorder, that he must continue for a while with men whom he hated and despised. He then proceeded to abuse them without measure, and in many particulars without justice, declaring that he never had and never could “break bread” in the house of any one of them. His public reception of Mr. Perceval with the resolution of the two Houses was not only cold but offensive. When a Privy Council was held at Carlton House and he took the oath of Regency, the bust of Mr. Fox was ostentatiously displayed in the apartment.

In his letter to Mr. Perceval announcing his determination to preserve him in office, he pointedly declared that an apprehension of interfering with the progress of his father’s recovery was the consideration which _alone_ dictated that decision. He lamented the situation in which the Regency Bill had placed him, said of it that it was most difficult to reconcile it to the principles of the Constitution, and broadly hinted throughout that nothing but peculiar circumstances could have brought him to any communication or concert with men so obnoxious to him. They, however, lacked some of that high and jealous honour which distinguished Lord Grey, and were not so alive as Lord Grenville to the necessity of preserving the constitutional relation of Prince and Ministry in all its purity. Foreseeing the practical consequences of their temporary continuance in office, they submitted without a murmur to the indignity of being disavowed and reviled. They consoled themselves with the prospect of riveting their power, either by intimidating or cajoling the person who, in the first instance, conferred it upon them so ungraciously and so reluctantly.

Such seems to me the solution of their conduct. With respect to the Prince Regent, I am inclined to believe that the motives he alleged had really some weight in determining him, though some that he suppressed had as much or more. Persons, indeed, have carried their refinement in suspicion so far as to imagine that the Queen’s letter, the interviews with Lord Grey and Lord Grenville and with their friends, and the rudeness to Mr. Perceval, were all parts of a scheme, concerted like the plot of a comedy with the Duke of Cumberland, the Lord Chancellor, the Queen, and the Prince Regent; and that the resolution to connect himself with those whom he affected to style his enemies was taken very early, and produced by the high offers which Mr. Perceval made in the arrangement for the Household, and by the suggestions which the Royal Family, and even the mad King himself, were instructed to make to him during the fortnight in which Lord Grey and Lord Grenville were occupied in preparing a Ministry. Such duplicity is surely incredible, especially as it would have been unnecessary. It is, however, true that the old King’s wishes on one important point were urged by himself in an interview with the Prince Regent, _viz._, on the reinstatement of the Duke of York. The facility with which the Ministers engaged to comply with that measure formed a strong contrast, in the mind of the Regent, with the scruples and hesitations of Lord Grey and Lord Grenville on the subject.

Whether he ascribed the backwardness of the two Lords to want of will or want of power, he drew, no doubt, an inference unfavourable to the Whigs, as either from principle less compliant with the wishes of a Court, or from the state of parties less capable of promoting them. The position into which the Regent had cast himself, whether from design or accident, was, while it lasted, peculiarly adapted to secure the gratification of any personal object he had in view. One party was full of devices to obtain his favour; the other, of forbearance not to forfeit it. This did not escape the friends of the Duke of York; and Lord Lauderdale, in particular, saw the advantage of the conjuncture for obtaining his reinstatement. He urged that measure, which in all sincerity he thought just and wise, with more warmth of friendship to the Duke than consideration for the interests of the party to which he belonged. He persuaded others, and perhaps himself, that by allowing it to be accomplished during that intermediate state of Ministry and Opposition, the Whigs might escape the unpopularity of doing it with the public and the odium of resisting it with the Prince Regent. Mr. Sheridan, with more shrewdness and pleasantry, advised the Regent to wait till his father’s predicted recovery should enable him to resume his functions, and then to urge _him_ to adopt the measure.

The Duke of York behaved with dignity, delicacy, and propriety. He avowed his hopes of ultimate reinstatement, but he deprecated so unpopular an act at the commencement of his brother’s administration of affairs. The Regent, however, urged by his family, encouraged by his Ministers, prompted by his pride, and swayed by some generosity of affection, replaced him.

Lord Milton,[93] against the wishes of many of our party, moved an address in censure of this step. He divided only 47. It must be acknowledged that among that small number were to be found some of the best names in the House of Commons.

The impression made on the Regent by Lord Grenville’s reluctance, Mr. Perceval’s cordial support, and Lord Milton’s open opposition, to a measure vindicating the honour of his family and earnestly desired by himself, was, no doubt, like that avowed by King William to the Duke of Wharton. “After all,” said King William, “the Tories are the best Ministers for a King.” “Yes,” replied the Duke, “but Your Majesty is not King of the Tories.”[94] It was the endeavour of Mr. Perceval to preclude the application of such a reply, and to make the Regent as much King of the Tories as of the Whigs; and in that endeavour he signally succeeded. The Regent kept up for some time his usual habits of private intercourse with members of the Opposition. He dined at Lord Grey’s upon his own invitation. He there authorised Lord Hutchinson to insinuate his good wishes, if not actually to use his name, in canvassing the Irish Peerage in favour of Lord Leitrim, the Whig candidate for a representative seat in the House of Lords, then vacant. His situation, as it respected our party, was indeed most anomalous. When he avowed any hostility to his ostensible Ministers, we were bound by the fundamental principles of our party to condemn his conduct as unconstitutional; when he betrayed any approbation of them, we were not backward in stigmatising his conduct as unsteady, insincere, and deceitful to us. Such a state of things could not last, and his cordiality with the Whigs, whether real or affected in the outset, visibly declined during the summer. I have been prolix in relating the facts, and rigidly scrupulous in conveying my impression of the motives of the Prince Regent, because I am satisfied that his character will be judged by posterity, or at least that portion of posterity which forms the future political circle of England, with reference to his conduct during this period of his life.

A letter from General FitzPatrick[95] to his brother Lord Ossory proves that experienced observers formed upon the same data a different judgment, and as it is more favourable to His Royal Highness than my own, I subjoin it, that his reputation may have the benefit of so indulgent a testimony from a man of acknowledged sagacity and honour, accurately informed, and not swayed by any prepossession in his favour.

_Thursday._

DEAR BROTHER,

I have had two very long audiences at Carlton House, and have consequently been let into the minute details of _all_ that has passed, as well as _all_ the letters, papers, etc., that have been written in the course of the transactions that have preceded the Prince’s final determination not to make any change in the Government. Much as I was prepossessed that his decision had been wrong, both with respect to his own character, to the public interests, and towards the persons to whom he had given his confidence, I must confess that he has succeeded in convincing me that under the very particular and unexampled difficulties of his situation, he has adopted the only line of conduct he possibly could, without exposing himself to the most odious imputations of destroying the sanguine hopes of his father’s recovery and even endangering his life, in order to establish an inefficient and feeble Government, probably of very short duration, and of no power to act with any real advantage to the public interests, or to face or struggle with any of the difficulties which threaten the security of the _chose publique_ from all quarters. In taking this resolution, however, though he cannot be justly charged with having departed from the rules of honour or _bonne foi_, it is certainly unfortunate for himself that he did not make a more early communication of it to those to whom he had given his confidence, as it throws upon his conduct the appearance of weakness, unsteadiness, and failure in point of firmness, to which many will be more inclined to ascribe it than to the motives of filial duty and affection upon which he himself entirely founds it. This decision they themselves (I mean the two G.G.’s)[96] had recommended at an earlier period in case of a prospect of speedy recovery: and that case is now represented to the Prince to be arrived. Upon the whole, however, it is evident that he is the victim of a Court intrigue, managed by the Queen and the Ladies of Windsor, a treacherous brother—the D. of C.,[97] and an intriguing, meddling physician.

He is, in his present temper, as much indisposed and, in his heart, as adverse to his Ministers as possible; but how long this disposition may endure is somewhat doubtful, for if the King be really so far recovered as to become an actor in the conspiracy himself, he will be as tractable as they can wish him. If you are inclined not to give him credit for all the filial piety he professes, his anxiety to do what his father will approve is (whether through fear or affection) excessive. He is already in the full conviction that the King, having been made acquainted with the state of things, has expressed his perfect reliance upon the Prince of Wales doing whatever is most right and proper in his situation. I believe all the physicians do sincerely think the recovery probable, though perhaps not, as Halford has said, highly so in _three months_; but surely it does appear most strange that the Chancellor and Perceval should be permitted to see and talk upon business with him, and one of the physicians hold an intercourse upon politics with him, when he is not sufficiently recovered to be allowed to see the Queen or any one of his family. The leaders of Opposition suppress their disappointment (if they feel any), as becomes them. As to the number of guests who were invited and ready to fall to with craving appetites, it is natural they should feel a little as Sancho did upon the physicians ordering every dish to be removed from the table. As none of the feast would have come to my share, I could, of course, feel no disappointment. You do me justice in believing that I needed no great stock of philosophy to be contented with _otium_ even _sine dignitate_, excepting that of closing my political career—what the course of my life seemed little to have fitted me for an independent Knight of the Shire[98] in the House of Commons. My love to all your house. I rejoice to hear V. S.[99] is going on well.

Yours affectly.

R. F.

General Fitzpatrick had refused all office on the ground of his declining health. He retained his good sense and pleasant conversation, but he suspected that the vigour of his mind was somewhat impaired. The above letter certainly betrays a facility of belief in the professions of the great, for which in his more active days he was by no means remarkable.

I now return to the events of Parliament in the Session of 1811.

A circular letter was written by Mr. Secretary Pole[100] to the magistrates of Ireland, requiring them to arrest and commit to prison such persons as had published any notice for electing any delegate or representative to a Catholic Convention, styled in the said circular, in virtue of an Irish Act of 33 Geo. III., an unlawful assembly.[101] The Act, however, authorised no such proceeding, though it made electing such a Convention, or voting in it, a misdemeanour. The doctrine and practice inculcated and recommended in this circular raised many of those questions which were afterwards more ably urged and better understood, in 1817, on the motion of Lord Grey on the circular of Lord Sidmouth. The legal part of the question was touched upon in our debates, but I was not sufficiently informed or confident enough in my own opinion to do it full justice. However, I entered a short protest on the Journals, in which the power of a magistrate to hold to bail for a misdemeanour, which does not amount to a breach of the peace, is peremptorily denied. It is not printed in the Registers, but it was approved of by that cautious lawyer, Sir Arthur Pigott; and Lord Chancellor Eldon acknowledged to me in private that the law of Secretary Pole’s letter was indefensible, and he even called it “_slovenly_” on his legs.

There was in the measure some appearance of a design to involve the Government of the Regent as soon as possible in an altercation with the Roman Catholic body, but Mr. Wellesley Pole was not likely to be a party to such a design; and as the most anti-Catholic members of the Administration disdained all previous knowledge of the proceeding, it is reasonable to infer that such a suspicion, though plausible, was not justified by the fact.

During the greater part of the Session of Parliament I was employed in a Committee to inquire into the circumstances of the death of one _Culver_, a debtor, in the Marshalsea prison. There were strong suspicions that the wretched man had been starved to death. The evidence given before our Committee was so indistinct and contradictory that we could not agree on a report; and the mere evidence which we did report did not lead to any further Parliamentary proceeding, either in the treatment of the deceased prisoner or the conduct of the Coroner’s jury. The exposure, however, of the state of the prison, which was in ruin, and where persons convicted of the most disgusting offences were associated with the unfortunate debtors during the day and then shut up with one another during the night, led no doubt to the speedy completion of a new prison. Such a building had been declared necessary many years before, but more progress was made in the course of the ensuing twelve months than in twelve years preceding the inquiry.

As some prospect of a change of Ministry still existed, I was anxious to pledge myself, and such others as were willing to support me, to some revision of the proceedings in cases of libel. The _ex officio_ informations[102] are indefensible in reason and very liable to abuse. If the Whigs obtained the Ministry, I thought they might, and I was sure they ought to, regulate and perhaps to suppress them, according to the original intention at the Revolution of 1688. When parties, however, are in office, though they may be sincerely determined never to abuse, they are seldom disposed voluntarily to surrender or curtail any of their powers, unless in a manner compelled to do so by recent declarations in favour of such reforms. I wished so to compel them. As I had sat in Cabinet with Lord Ellenborough,[103] and, though not blind to his defects, enjoyed his conversation in private society, and respected some talents and many virtues in his public character, I hoped and laboured, in moving for a return of the _ex officio_ informations, to avoid every topic or even phrase which could irritate his temper, so sore on everything that distantly approached a reflection on the practice of his Court. I failed in my endeavours. He treated me with intolerable rudeness, which I was obliged to repel with equal asperity and, I think, with much greater success.

We never afterwards had any altercation in public, and we both retained a certain goodwill and respect for one another; but the language which passed produced a degree of estrangement which, I believe, we both lamented, but which we were both too proud to correct. He was a man of an honest but violent temper, of profound rather than various learning, of powerful but not persuasive eloquence, of strong but by no means of enlarged understanding. If he was not quite so intrepid or so inflexible as he would have had us believe, so neither was he so harsh or ill-natured as he appeared. Sarcasms and invectives were always on his lips; but they were the accidental effervescence of spleen, impatience, or wit, not the sediments of malignity, from which his heart was generally clear. One of his defects was a habit of complaining of the insufficiency of his income and the narrowness of his circumstances. He was never sparing of expense; and yet he has recently (I write in 1819) left a considerable fortune, which proves his profits to have been not only ample but splendid.

Lord Sidmouth, to ingratiate himself with the Church, had introduced a bill to deprive Dissenting Ministers of their exemption from serving in the Militia, unless they could procure a certificate from respectable householders belonging to their congregation. On the first notice I sounded the alarm on the hazard of meddling with the Toleration Act. The appeal was heard, and his Lordship’s bill, which was held in abhorrence by the Methodists, served only to display the numbers and improve the organisation of that powerful sect. For some days no places were to be had in the stage coaches and diligences of the kingdom; all were occupied with petitions to Parliament against the measure proposed by Lord Sidmouth. On the day fixed for the debate such innumerable petitions were presented by Lord Grey, Lord Erskine, Lord Stanhope, myself, and others, that not only the table was filled, but the House was filled with parchment. The peers could hardly get to the doors, the avenues were so crowded with men of grave deportment and puritanical aspect; when there, they had almost equal difficulty in gaining their seats, for loads of parchment encumbered and obstructed their way to them. Lord Sidmouth, with a bad grace, was obliged to yield. In the result, religious liberty was a gainer. To pacify the alarms which had been raised and the passions which had been excited, several important concessions were successively granted in subsequent Sessions to the various Protestant Dissenters of England.

Many of their leading men came to thank me in person. All I requested of them, in return, was to assist me in extending to any other class of Dissenters the full enjoyment of their civil and political rights. They promised they would do so; and when in 1812 and 1813 I claimed their promise in favour of the Roman Catholic Dissenters, I found them as good as their word.

Parliament this year showed an inclination to discountenance flogging in the Army. A clause to substitute at discretion imprisonment for that degrading and cruel punishment was introduced into the Mutiny Bill. This tardy and imperfect triumph of mercy over cruelty and of reason over habit and prejudice was in a very great degree owing to the zealous and disinterested exertions, though occasionally ill-timed, of Sir Francis Burdett. He had, at all times, the great merit of feeling with sincerity and expressing without fear great indignation and horror of all personal cruelty and oppression. This and a sweetness of temper and manner were his best, perhaps his only good, qualities in public life. In political intercourse with individuals or parties he was, chiefly from facility, little to be relied upon. His opinions, whenever they were intelligible, were equally repugnant to reason and subversive of all free or, at least, of all Parliamentary Government. He hated the Whigs and the Revolution as much as the abuses in our representation, and more than any prerogatives of the Crown; and would have reduced the functions of the House of Commons, even if modelled to his theory of excellence, to the two functions of granting money to the Crown and occasionally impeaching a Minister for corrupt or illegal practices.

The remainder of the Session was chiefly occupied with discussions on the state of our circulation and questions relating to paper and bullion. The merit of Mr. Horner in the investigation of this intricate subject, and still more in his honest, zealous, and firm maintenance of those principles which he was satisfied were sound, can hardly be appreciated, now that the prejudices he had to contend with have expired, and the truths he combated for have proved victorious upon experience and are generally admitted as incontrovertible and even obvious.[104] So far was this from being the case at the time, that his doctrines were deemed theoretical and visionary, and his conduct impracticable, hazardous to the country, and ruinous to himself. He seemed to sacrifice the fairest objects of ambition, and to incur at the outset of his public life the private enmity of large bodies of men and great unpopularity with the public, by a patient, diligent, and determined inquiry into matters which, little attractive in their nature, led him, as he well knew, to conclusions unpalatable to powerful individuals as well as to the Bank and the Government. He foresaw that his opinions on this subject must lose him the seat in Parliament which he then held.

Such was the repugnance felt at that time to doctrines now universally approved, that I was assured by Lord Lansdowne that the borough of Calne would hardly have chosen the Chairman of the Bullion Committee for their representative, even if he had been supported by that recommendation to which on all other occasions they have uniformly deferred. The dread of the consequences of fair dealing and honesty, or rather the persuasion of the convenience of paying for everything in fluctuating and depreciated paper, was not confined to the vulgar. All the supporters of the war, and some who, without approving its origin, profited by the spirit of speculation to which its continuance gave occasion, were for preserving a hazardous and dishonest system which, according to the fashionable jargon of that day, afforded “such facilities to the operations of the State.”

Lord King,[105] who thoroughly understood the whole subject of exchanges and currency, devised a method by no means ill calculated to defeat the system and disconcert its supporters. He determined to enforce the strict letter of his leases, and call for the payment of rent in the lawful coin of the kingdom. Injudiciously for his object, he sent a circular to that purpose to his tenants, while Parliament was yet sitting. The question was thus brought in the first instance before a tribunal competent to make or alter the law, instead of one which had no authority but to enforce it. Lord Stanhope, by some accident, obtained very early intelligence of this proceeding. He was a zealous promoter of the paper system, with views very different from those entertained or professed by its other advocates. He was the first to call the attention of Parliament to the consequences of Lord King’s demand on his tenants. The bill he presented to the House of Lords, without actually declaring banknotes legal tender, deprived the creditor, to whom they were offered in payment, of all legal remedy whatever. The measure, though entirely altered in form, received in substance the sanction of Parliament. Had Lord King postponed his circular a few weeks longer, either two prices would have been established in the markets, all the facilities, as they were called, annihilated, or the Parliament would have been called upon to interfere in the matter, in a case where no political object could have been imputed to those who exacted their rights.

_J. Hoppner, R.A. Pinx._

_Emery Walker Ph. Sc._]

Lord Chesterfield, a man of very large landed property, blindly attached to the politics of the Court, but living in some measure in retirement from it, was on the point of issuing a similar demand on his tenantry, when Lord King’s operations brought the subject before the public. Lord Stanhope, who had panegyrised the system of _assignats_ in France, very consistently liked the banknotes in England; and when I told him that he expected them to have the same effect in England, he whispered, with a suppressed chuckle, in my ear: “And if they take property from the drones and give it to the bees, where, my dear _Citoyen_, is the great harm of that?” He had also invented an ingenious device for preventing forgeries. He always delighted in the application of science to any political purposes. The hopes of that experiment being adopted very possibly inflamed his zeal in support of a paper currency.

The Prince Regent (whether from real ignorance of the question, from dread of unpopularity, or, as is most probable, from an incipient disposition to court his Ministers and detach himself from Opposition, I know not) disliked the prospect of any resumption of cash payments. Though originally averse to the Spanish expeditions and perhaps to the cause of the insurgents, who mixed too much of the froth, at least, if not of the essence, of liberty in their productions to make them palatable to princely appetites, he grew by degrees interested in the war from the successes in Portugal and from the discussion of military details and promotions, always delightful to Royal ears.

This growing inclination to prosecute the war with vigour tended, no doubt, to reconcile him to his Ministers in preference to their opponents, though it failed to secure his support of Lord Wellesley in his breach with his colleagues on that very subject. His conduct on two affairs of less importance foreboded an approaching alteration in his feelings towards public men, by indicating a disposition in him to accommodate differences with those who were now his official Ministers, but whom he had hitherto termed and thought his personal enemies. The first was the Berkeley Peerage; the other, the claim of Mr. Palmer for remuneration for the invention of mail coaches.

The Prince of Wales had taken a strong interest in establishing the validity of Lord Berkeley’s marriage; he had even promised him, before his death, to indemnify his son for any unfavourable decision which might occur, by conferring an earldom upon him whenever it should be in his power.[106] When, however, the claim was heard, though he and the other Royal Princes had been eager in the cause even to indecency, he gradually became colder and colder; when it terminated in a decision[107] against the marriage, he either did not venture or did not choose to renew any promise to the lady or the young man. He was, however, fully justified, perhaps he was really determined, by the detection of falsehoods in Lady Berkeley’s testimony and the undeniable exposure of the badness of the case.

Such could not be his motive for withdrawing all his usual countenance and promised support from Mr. Palmer. The claim of that gentleman, containing an implied censure of Mr. Pitt, was always bitterly resisted by that Minister’s adherents; but the Prince of Wales had warmly espoused it, and had been active and eager in instigating Colonel Palmer to prosecute it.[108] The claim itself, if not strictly and literally just, was in my judgment irresistible on the honour and policy of the country.[109]

The shrewd in our party left Parliament in the summer of 1811 with more apprehensions of the Prince Regent’s designs than confidence in his late professions. If his resolution to exclude the Whigs from office was not actually taken before the Session was closed, I have good reason to believe that even then, or very shortly afterwards, he harboured a project of dividing them, and forming a Ministry composed indiscriminately of various parties in Parliament. There were reports, very soon after the Prorogation, of a rupture between the Prince Regent and Mr. Perceval, and of an endeavour on the part of the Prince to form a Ministry through Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning. I know not what, nor indeed that anything, passed.

There were, however, symptoms of a disposition in the Court to feel the pulse of individuals in all parties. Mr. Sheridan during the recess saw me frequently, and questioned me much whether the Duke of Bedford, myself, and any old Foxite would be disposed to accept of high office in a Government, in the formation of which Lord Grey and Lord Grenville were not chiefly consulted. I discouraged all such projects. I cannot tell how far they were suggestions of his own or concerted with the Prince Regent. I told him explicitly that unless Lord Grey or Lord Grenville, as the heads of our party, or Mr. Ponsonby, as leader of it in the House of Commons, were sent to in the first instance, any offer to bring in the Whigs would appear insidious; that I for one, and probably all men of weight who professed attachment to the principles of Mr. Fox, would have nothing to do with it in that shape. We could not and would not separate from Lord Grenville, after his consistent and honourable conduct. Lord Grey or our leader in the House of Commons were the only other channels through which any offer could with propriety be conveyed to the party. Lord Grey and Lord Grenville had been sent for and actually employed last year. None but Mr. Ponsonby, with a view of confirming his authority in the House of Commons and consulting him in the first instance on the practicability of conducting the business in that assembly, could now be sent for, without the appearance or indeed the reality of an affront to the two Lords, whom the Prince Regent had so recently acknowledged as the heads of the party and the men to whom, on a change, he intended to entrust the management of public affairs. If, therefore, the Prince Regent intended to form an Administration of his old friends the Whigs, he would send directly to one of these three persons. Should he send for any other member of the party, it would obviously indicate a design of weakening the party he affected to favour. Such was the substance of my answer in more than one conversation which Mr. Sheridan had sought with me.[110]

The Regent, or those immediately about him, had frequent conversations on similar topics with Mr. Adam. Their art, or Mr. Adam’s own sanguine nature, completely cajoled him. He was satisfied that an entire change at the expiration of the restrictions was intended. He diligently laboured to impress that conviction upon us all: first, from sincerely believing and wishing it himself, and, secondly, with a view, which always led him too far, of surmounting the difficulty immediately before him, and getting the pecuniary arrangements connected with the Regency passed with little opposition in the ensuing Session of Parliament.

General Fox[111] died in the summer of 1811. He was a kind, affectionate, and reasonable man, without brilliant talents or extraordinary attainments, and with very bounded ambition; he had opinions on public matters more favourable to freedom than is common in his profession, and a stronger mind than his friends, or perhaps he himself, ever suspected. His professional habits were formed in the school of Sir Guy Carleton[112] and Lord Cornwallis, men who, whatever were their military merits, deserve to be remembered as the first in our army who systematically disclaimed for themselves and discountenanced in others all jobs and embezzlement.

I had at this time no intelligence of the war or of foreign negotiations but such as Gazettes, Parliamentary papers, and common Journals supply. I therefore abstain from relating the events in Spain, and the changes which were gradually taking place in the politics of Russia during the summer and autumn of 1811. I did, indeed, my utmost in private correspondence with Spaniards to soften that jealousy which was naturally, but unwisely and unjustly, felt at our interference.[113]

In the meanwhile the retreat of Massena, though admirably conducted by that General and by Ney, had justified the foresight and relieved the embarrassments of Lord Wellington. Our prospects in the Peninsula were improved. The forced exclusion of all British manufactures from the rest of Europe (the _Continental System_, as it was called), imposed on Russia by intimidation and by the ascendancy which Napoleon fondly imagined he had personally acquired over Alexander, was so much at variance with the interests both of nations and individuals, that even where the Governments were cordially subservient to the views of France, they found it impracticable to maintain so unnatural a policy. Alexander, who had not had the courage to support the interests of his Empire against the pretensions of France, began to discover that even “Autocracy” itself would not enable him to execute treaties which he had been base enough to sign against the obvious policy, wishes, and murmurs of his subjects. The Russians themselves felt the ignominy of submitting to the dictates of a foreign power, though willingly enforced by their Czar, when they discovered that an obedience to those dictates would prevent the sale of their produce and involve the proprietors of land in distress and ruin.

It is singular that while the successful war in Spain and the rupture between Russia and France—the two great sources of the subsequent triumph over Napoleon—were opening themselves in 1811, the only English Minister from whose sagacity either of them in any degree flowed was gradually separating himself from his colleagues. This was Lord Wellesley.[114] As Ambassador and Secretary of State he had given to the councils of Spain and to our military exertions some statesmanlike consistency of design. He had also, with no little dexterity, and (as I have been assured) without consulting his colleagues, detached General Bernadotte, then Crown Prince of Sweden, from his connection with France;[115] he thereby ensured the co-operation of a power which might have intimidated Russia from hostilities with Napoleon, and which did in fact ultimately determine Alexander, when wavering and even yielding, to persevere in resistance to the invaders. Some of his other projects, such as a negotiation for peace with the Police Minister Fouché, and a foolish scheme of rescuing King Ferdinand from his captivity by means of an adventurer called Kolli,[116] were not equally fortunate or well conceived.

But whatever were the merits or the blemishes of his designs abroad, he was at this time meditating a line of policy at home which would have led to great changes in office—to a renewal of his connection with Mr. Canning, and not improbably to a union between him and the Whigs in power under the Prince Regent. He had more genius than prudence, more spirit than principle, and manifestly despised his colleagues as much as they dreaded him. Unlike most English politicians, he was rather a statesman than a man of business, and more capable of doing extraordinary things well than conducting ordinary transactions with safety or propriety.

He was reported to have ingratiated himself during the summer with the Prince Regent, and with the exception of an unqualified zeal in the prosecution of the Spanish war, the natural growth of his early interest in that contest, and of his connection with Lord Wellington, his opinions on public questions seemed to smooth the way to a coalition with those to whom His Royal Highness was expected to entrust the management of his affairs.[117] When, however, he tendered his resignation early in 1812, he discovered that an inclination to Whigs or to liberal policy was no strong recommendation to the Prince Regent. He learnt with yet more chagrin that his brother would not hazard a rupture with the Ministers, even in support of the remonstrances which he (Lord Wellesley) had made, if not at his instigation, at least on his behalf, for further succours and supplies. I know not whether to blame or to commend him. A commander on service is not lightly to lend himself to party in a struggle for power at home. He may, nay, he must, prefer serving under those to whom he is chiefly bound by affection and gratitude and those with whom he cordially agrees and co-operates; but he must not make a national cause subservient to their views of ambition at home, unless he thinks their possession of power not only useful, but indispensably necessary, to its maintenance and its success.

Lord Wellington, therefore, on the turn of fortune in Spain, did right not to sacrifice his own station and growing fame and the national interest to the object of securing or replacing his brother in power, even though that brother should have forfeited it by his zealous exertions to minister to his glory abroad. Who shall blame him for not hesitating between such important public considerations and his own private affections? Possibly, however, Lord Wellesley, and certainly his adherents, were hurt that so little was done by Lord Wellington to avert the necessity of so painful an option. They significantly remarked that the sacrifice was made with so very good a grace, as not only to answer the calls of duty, but to suppress every symptom of pain or reluctance in performing it. Lord Wellesley, to whose partiality and affection his brother had been indebted for his promotion, fame, and success, would have acquired, said his friends, if placed in a similar predicament, the same praise of heroic duty, but it would have cost him much more to obtain it. Whether such insinuations were well founded or not, it is certain that after that period a coolness between the brothers ensued, and it must be acknowledged that subsequent transactions will not exonerate Lord Wellington of the charges of indifference or want of feeling by proving such defects to be quite foreign to his character.

Lord Wellesley treated Mr. Perceval and the other Ministers with manifest scorn and contempt. In a subsequent altercation between him and Lord Harrowby in the House of Lords, respecting the differences in Cabinet while he remained among them, his superiority in wit, spirit, vigour, and eloquence was most decisive. Yet when, on Lord Boringdon’s motion for an efficient Administration, he was expected to vindicate his own motives and conduct, and to explain at large his views of domestic and foreign policy, though he had come down with mighty ostentation, dressed and decorated, as his usage was, for the delivery of a great speech, his nerves failed him entirely, and he allowed the question to go to a division without uttering one word. So universal was the persuasion that he was, on that day, to outdo himself, and so positive was the expectation of his speaking, that some one, on the Chancellor’s return from the House, asked, without the ceremony of a previous inquiry whether he had spoken or not, “What was the style of Lord Wellesley’s speech?” “I think in that of Tacitus,” replied Lord Eldon.

He was, indeed, a most _uncertain_ speaker in every sense of the word. After studiously announcing his intentions of speaking, and repeating his views and arguments and illustrations in private to friend and to foe, he not unfrequently sat silent. When he did rise, it was often doubtful which side he would espouse, what topics he would select, and whether he would treat them with ability and eloquence or lapse into frothy, trite, and unmeaning declamation, or entangle himself in some metaphysical disquisition which he was quite unequal to unravel or expound. His allusions were more classical than apposite, and his language that of a polite scholar even to a fault. His wit was elaborate and far-fetched, but well and neatly executed. He was sometimes illogical, and I have known him pompous, empty, and unsatisfactory. Yet there was a smack, a fancy of greatness in all he did: and though in his speeches, his manners, and his actions he was very open to ridicule, those who smiled and even laughed could not despise him.

He had tendered his resignation in January; it was not accepted till March.[118] While he was yet nominally in office, and before the restrictions on the Regency had expired, Mr. Perceval proposed the Civil List and the regulation of the Household. The arrangement was purposely complicated and infinitely more expensive to the country than the circumstances justified, or than either the party who proposed or the party who acquiesced in could sincerely approve. Mr. Tierney had the honesty to say so, and perhaps had the shrewdness even then to perceive what it now seems strange should have escaped the observation of any man, that the sums granted for the Privy Purse and Household were sufficient, not only to provide for the wants, but to purchase the favour of the Prince Regent. Some semblance, however, of consistency and honour was to be preserved. The Prince Regent was in a manner pledged, on the expiration of the restrictions, to make some overture to the Whigs. He was too well acquainted with the characters of the men with whom he had to deal, and indeed too great an adept in that sort of game, not to devise in a moment a method of making the offer, which secured its rejection. He wrote the following letter to the Duke of York.[119]...

Lord Grey and Lord Grenville requested twenty-four hours to consult their friends, and to consider of the answer to the overture contained in the letter above recited from the Prince Regent to the Duke of York. Lord Lansdowne, Lord Lauderdale, Mr. Ponsonby, and myself met them at Mr. Thomas Grenville’s, when they produced a written paper, the composition of Lord Grenville, which they proposed to transmit to the Duke of York. The overture contained in the letter to the Duke of York was, as the reader must have perceived, in substance, nothing more than an invitation to Lord Grey and Lord Grenville and some others recommended by them, to accept office with an Administration whose measures and system they had uniformly and strenuously opposed, and whose persons and behaviour the Prince Regent himself, only a year before, had indecently reviled in every company and affected to resent in a manner full as warm as any indignity, purely political, could justify.

The proposed answer was very decisive, but unnecessarily long. It was unadvisedly explicit on every topic which had been artfully introduced into the Prince Regent’s letter; in short, it was an elaborate manifesto of the two Lords on all political questions on which they differed with Ministers. It contained a sort of creed on the Spanish war, the Orders in Council, the paper system, and the Roman Catholic claims, to which none but their own friends, and not all of them, could implicitly have subscribed. The Prince Regent’s letter was no doubt framed with a design of provoking the two Lords to recapitulate opinions which the writer, whoever he was, thought to be impracticable and knew to be unpopular.

The prospect of their accession to power had been contemplated with some apprehension by those who felt zealous in the cause and gratified by the glories of the Spanish war. Such persons had been confirmed in their apprehensions, by the very injudicious language of some of Lord Grenville’s connections, as well as by enemies[120] who studiously repeated such language and industriously circulated the report that the first consequence of their elevation to power would be the recall of every British soldier from the Peninsula. The notion of resuming cash payments was, at that time, to the full as unpopular. Speculators, who profited by a system of improvident dishonesty and lavish expenditure, affected to regard the principles of the Bullion Committee[121] as purely chimerical, and the statesmen who espoused them as sacrificing the national prosperity to the theories of political economists.

In their first sketch of an answer the two Lords fell into the snare prepared for them. They avowed all these opinions so unpalatable to the public, and they enforced them in an authoritative tone little calculated to soothe or to convince. In the views insinuated about the Spanish alliance and war, I for one could not have concurred. The unqualified declaration of their principles respecting both our currency and trade, though perfectly sound, seemed highly unreasonable; and the authoritative tone in which they announced their views would have exposed them to the censure of exacting an implicit compliance with all their opinions from the Court and the public, at a time when both were avowedly desirous of softening down differences, for the purpose of forming what is called a strong, but often proves to be a very weak, Administration. Lord Lansdowne, with his usual judgment, perceived the impolicy of so copious a manifesto, and, with more than his usual energy, urged the necessity of shortening the letter and confining the grounds of refusal to that which formed the most obvious and insurmountable bar to a coalition between Mr. Perceval and the Whigs, _viz._, their opposite views of the Roman Catholic question and the system of government in Ireland. Accordingly the following answer was drawn up and afterwards delivered by Lords Grey and Grenville to the Duke of York....[122]

The Duke of York took minutes of the conversation which occurred on the two Lords delivering this answer in writing to him. He very candidly submitted those minutes to their inspection, and they made such explanations and comments on the Duke’s report of what they said, as precluded the possibility of a misunderstanding. The Duke contended that the letter was not an overture to them to form a part of Mr. Perceval’s Administration, or even to coalesce with that gentleman as Minister, but to concur in forming a new Administration on a broad basis; and he urged, as a proof of his view of the subject, that he had been selected to convey the communication, in order that the person so employed might not be designated as the head of the new Administration. These distinctions, immaterial in themselves, were set aside by Lord Grey observing that the answer given was to the written statement which they had seen, and if it should appear to the Prince Regent that they had misunderstood the meaning of that paper, he might rectify the mistake. In the meanwhile they adhered to their answer. Here ended the negotiation. Lord Castlereagh was in a few days appointed Secretary of State in the place of Lord Wellesley.[123]

The answer of Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, and the tone and temper in which it was conveyed, were very generally approved of. Many no doubt rejoiced at so open a breach between them and the Prince Regent, and none probably more than His Royal Highness himself. Yet friend and foe, Whig and Tory, directly or indirectly acknowledged that to such an overture no other answer could have been given with honour. The form was yet more unobjectionable. The language, however, of the party, and possibly of some of the leaders, was not perhaps equally irreproachable and certainly not equally judicious. In conversations, speeches, and publications there was much personal asperity and some indecorous satire and invective. Those who had early opportunities of studying the character of the Prince should have known that personal slights were more deeply felt and more certainly resented by him than real indignities, injuries, or ill-usage.

His more recent acquaintances had sagacity enough to discover that secret very soon, and dexterity enough to act upon it. They bore tales of much that was said, and of more that was never said, to his disparagement by the principal characters in Opposition. Studiously directing his attention to the numberless lampoons that appeared, they affixed to each whatever name it was most their interest to render obnoxious. I knew more than one instance of persons passing at Carlton House for the authors or instigators of the very epigrams or paragraphs they had deprecated, lamented, and condemned. Lord Grey unquestionably felt great indignation. Ever open, artless, and impetuous, he could not stop to conceal it. The coarse and unmannerly phrases imputed to him were, indeed, never uttered; but his unguarded exposure of the Prince Regent’s duplicity in all companies, and his severe animadversion in the House of Lords on the defection of Lord Cholmondeley and the few insignificant sycophants who followed him, sank deep in the Royal mind. The new Court was henceforward _to the full as intent as the old one_ on excluding the Whigs from all office, favour, or power.

Although the offences of Lord Grey, owing to the high station he filled in the eyes of men, were more important, and, owing to early personal jealousies between him and the Prince of Wales, were less easily pardoned than those of others, such indiscretions were not confined to him. We all incurred the guilt, if not the odium, of charging His Royal Highness with ingratitude and perfidy. We all encouraged every species of satire against him and his mistress. He retorted in language to the full as unmeasured, and in assertions much more unfounded. He drove Lord Lauderdale to the necessity, first, of remonstrating with him, and afterwards, of absenting himself, by bursting forth suddenly, intemperately, and violently against his political friends—a scene rendered memorable by having excited the tears of the young Princess Charlotte, who was present, and yet more so by those tears becoming the subject of Lord Byron’s verse.[124]

That extraordinary young man had satirised and ridiculed me, in common with many others, in his _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, under a very erroneous impression that I had written or caused to be written the criticism on his first publication in the _Edinburgh Review_[125]; whereas it was from that printed _Review_ that I first learnt the existence of the poems, or indeed of the author, whose title I had thought was extinct. My friend Mr. Rogers knew this circumstance; he asked me if I objected to his repeating it to Lord Byron. I answered: “Far from it, provided he repeated it as he had heard it from me, a fact related in accidental conversation, and not a message or explanation sent from me to Lord Byron.” Mr. Rogers soon afterwards informed me that Lord Byron wished to speak in Parliament against the Frame-breaking Bill, and that he was anxious to learn the forms and to consult some peer in Opposition. Mr. Rogers asked me if I would allow him to introduce me to the young poet. I willingly and warmly acquiesced, gave him what assistance I could, and received from him a very handsome and well-written letter. His speech was full of fancy, wit, and invective, but not exempt from affectation nor well reasoned, nor at all suited to our common notions of Parliamentary eloquence. His fastidious and artificial taste and his over-irritable temper would, I think, have prevented him from ever excelling in Parliament.

This accidental intercourse about his first speech led to our acquaintance and even friendly familiarity, which was never interrupted. I have mentioned it because everything relating to him excites curiosity; and the uniformly courteous, I might almost say grateful, manner in which he acknowledged and returned my trifling services, amounting to little more than ordinary civility, shows a sensibility and kindness for imaginary favours in one who was unhappily too often suspected, with reason, of an extreme susceptibility to slight, and even imaginary, injuries. His speech and his verses on Princess Charlotte’s tears fixed his politics, and he was[126] upon system invariably attached to the party and principles of the Whigs. Mr. Rogers himself, on the unexpected conduct of the Prince Regent, put one of the many witty epigrams he is in the habit of uttering into verse, and the lines found their way into the newspapers. Another poet, Mr. Moore, with more party zeal and Irish humour than worldly prudence, parodied the Prince Regent’s letter to the Duke of York. His friend, Lord Moira, approved of the conduct of Lord Grey and Lord Grenville in declining the overture; he even drew out an answer, which he wished them to adopt and communicated to me for that purpose. It required, indeed, some further explanation; but it insisted, even in a more authoritative tone than the paper they sent, on the impossibility of their _entering into the Cabinet_ of a Ministry whose measures they had uniformly _reprobated_.

The two Irish brothers Lord Donoughmore and Lord Hutchinson kept no measures with the Court. The Regent was so exasperated at their language, that he affected to lament that he was not a private man and able to call one of them at least to account for a personal affront. Perhaps a more accurate knowledge of that family’s proficiency in pistols might, on reflection, reconcile His Royal Highness to the privations of his exalted station.

The unfortunate breach between the Roman Catholics of Ireland and their able supporter Lord Grenville, effected by the machinations of Dr. Milner,[127] who had shamelessly disavowed him, had rendered it necessary to place the petitions of that body in other hands. Lord Grey, I believed, had declined them some time before; and when I was sounded on the subject I told them that, if offered, I should not refuse them; but that for my sake, and still more for their own, I wished them to deliver their petitions to some one less connected with Lord Grenville and more disposed to approve of, as well as not to combat, their objections to the veto[128] and to the restrictions, which topic would not improbably be introduced into the debate.

They pitched on Lord Donoughmore, the representative of that Protestant family which had first and most uniformly espoused their cause, and one who at the time of the Union and at the formation of Lord Fitzwilliam’s Administration had been, as I believe, the channel of communication between them and the Government. He accepted the commission of pleading their cause in Parliament with cheerfulness, and he executed it with considerable ability. If in judgment there was some deficiency, there was an abundant supply of that which Irishmen and Roman Catholics value more—spirit and even violence. His personalities to the Regent and to Lady Hertford were somewhat too coarse for our English palates; but his excuse of so great a breach of decorum was this. He had been twice the channel to convey direct or implicit promises which had been violated, and to excite expectations which had been disappointed. Had he submitted a third time, without open and unqualified hostility to those who had deceived him, he thought his own honour might be questioned by his countrymen. He preferred deserving the reproach of rudeness and indelicacy to incurring even the suspicion of duplicity and treachery. Whatever be the value of such an apology, the Irish Catholics so far justified his speculations that they warmly applauded his vehemence and personality, and in _an evil hour for themselves_ embodied the most offensive passages of his speech into resolutions at their various meetings throughout Ireland. Some years afterwards their writers in Ireland most falsely attributed this conduct to the instigation of their Parliamentary friends in England. I believe that neither Lord Grey, Lord Grenville, Lord Lansdowne, myself, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. Grattan, Mr. Tierney, Mr. Canning, nor any one active Member of Parliament, had the slightest intimation of their intention to propose such intemperate resolutions; I am sure that we one and all lamented and condemned them when adopted.

Even those among us who were most indignant at the conduct of the Prince Regent felt that it was not good policy in the Roman Catholics to express their sense of it too warmly, much less in the coarse, revolting, and scurrilously personal libel. In the Commons Mr. Grattan was more temperate as well as more eloquent, but not much more successful. The majorities of both Houses, though not very great, and weakened by the loss of Lord Wellesley and his few adherents, showed that in the opinion of politicians the Prince Regent had joined the Anti-Catholic faction, or that Mr. Perceval had contrived to fix himself permanently in power. He seemed, indeed, determined to exact a yet stronger proof of the attachment of his followers, by insisting on their adherence to the Orders in Council,[129] which were involving us in hostilities with North America, ruining our commerce, and impoverishing our manufacturers in a way that excited universal distress and clamour, and threatened to produce defalcation in our revenue and insurrection in the country.

But this infatuated course of policy was suddenly arrested by one of those unforeseen events which, springing from small, private, and unconnected causes, have, in their consequences, the greatest effect on the fate of nations and [the] happiness of mankind. A madman of the name of Bellingham had been, or thought he had been, aggrieved by some of our public agents abroad. He was full of resentment at the supposed injury, and yet more at the neglect with which his importunate remonstrances had been treated by persons in power and their respective offices in England. If his own account is to be trusted, he devoted some person in high rank and office as an atonement for his wrongs; but was nearly indifferent on whom answering that description his vengeance might fall. He pitched on Mr. Perceval the Prime Minister, or Lord Granville Leveson,[130] who was Ambassador in Russia at the time certain claims in indemnification of losses sustained by him at Archangel had been presented without effect to the Russian and English Governments, without any positive personal enmity to either of those individuals. He determined, however, to sacrifice the first of the two who should come within his reach. Accordingly, with this view, he took his stand on May 11, 1812, in the lobby of the House of Commons, of which both were members, with two small loaded pistols in his pocket; he sat patiently near the door till Mr. Perceval made his appearance, and then, approaching him without gesticulation or violence, shot him through the heart. His victim staggered and fell, exclaiming, “I am murdered,” or, “The villain has murdered me,” or words to that effect, and never spoke more.

The whole scene and many of the circumstances recalled the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham by Felton, and in nothing did it resemble it more than in the cool composure of the assassin, who, I think, resumed his seat, but certainly made no effort to escape. On making inquiry after “the villain,” when the agitation had subsided, he surrendered himself without a struggle. On the spot, on the first examination, and on the trial, he avowed the deed; and though he called himself an unfortunate man, he seemed neither to repent nor to feel much anxiety to vindicate his motives or to avoid the consequences of his crime.

I was talking to Lord Spencer in the House of Lords, when we heard either the report of pistols or the scream of horror which the perpetration of the crime had excited. I recollect exclaiming, “What is that?” and being told, after a short interval, that it was a madman who thought himself the Duke of Norfolk and frequently molested the Courts of Justice with his pretensions. It was not long, however, before a figure, pale and breathless, rushed into the House, and, leaning on the bar, repeated twice or thrice, “He is murdered; I saw him dead.” “Who?” “Where are we to go to assist?” was reiterated from many present; and some minutes, I think, elapsed before we actually learnt that it was Mr. Perceval who was killed. The consternation was great; the appearance of most present ghastly. I remember I wondered to myself whether my face was as much altered as those of the persons around me—a thought which proves (as what indeed does not?) the accuracy and truth of the observation of Shakespeare on our feelings.

Look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest?

is an exclamation of one of his characters, on hearing in a large company of the violent death of the Duke of Clarence.[131]

The peers were coming in very fast, and I think we took some precautions to inform Lord Arden[132] of the event. All expressed horror; some few seemed to ponder on the changes likely to ensue; and more were manifestly apprehensive that the crime was connected with extensive designs, and the result of conspiracies which the state of the country rendered by no means improbable. The House of Commons had adjourned. The House of Lords has been censured and ridiculed for not doing so too; perhaps it was the best course. Yet to quit the spot on the report of a crime committed within the precincts of Parliament, without inquiry into the fact or comment upon it, seemed to many peers, and among them, I own, to me, an unnatural and undignified and almost a dastardly proceeding. We had, therefore, the fact deposed to at the bar; but when we had resolved to ground some proceeding thereupon, it must be acknowledged that we found some difficulty in devising any in form and substance unobjectionable. We passed an address unanimously to the Prince Regent, praying him little more than to enforce the laws. Lord Radnor wrote and Lord Chancellor moved it. Most of the peers present accompanied it to Carlton House. It is to be observed that the Lords were not aware of the character and condition of the assassin. They who blame our proceeding should reflect what would have been their own impression, and what the inferences in the public, had the murder turned out to be a part of any extensive design, and the two Houses, on the perpetration of it, had dispersed themselves, without daring to express their sense of the outrage or a determination to investigate the causes of it.

The Old Bailey Sessions were sitting, and the assassin was brought to immediate trial. He applied for delay to bring witnesses from a distance in proof of his insanity. He was denied that indulgence, condemned on the 15th, and executed on May 18, within one week of the perpetration of the murder. Such hurry was by many thought harsh and illegal, and by more injudicious and improper. Insanity, or at least insanity of a certain sort, by the law of England exempts the accused from a verdict of guilty. The wisdom of such mercy may reasonably be questioned; but whatever the law wisely or unwisely admits to be a vindication of the act, the accused should be allowed full opportunity of proving in his defence. It was, therefore, shrewdly suspected that there was more dread of a Prime Minister’s murderer escaping than reverence for the forms of law in the refusal to postpone the trial. Whether from this consideration, from the distress of the times, from the acrimonious spirit of Mr. Perceval’s politics, or from that composed courage in the sufferer, which in spite of reason seldom fails to conciliate favour even for a criminal, certain it is, that among the crowds who thronged to the execution of Bellingham more commiseration was shown for the culprit than for his victim. Women were struck with his fine and manly person. Strange tales of his amorous complexion, whispered abroad, did not weaken that favourable impression. They were currently repeated at this day,[133] and I am sorry to acknowledge that at the distance of some years the name of Bellingham was far from unpopular in London.

In truth, the death of Mr. Perceval was hailed as a deliverance in various parts of the country. Some classes, whose habits should have taught them to reject any consolation drawn from the commission of a horrible crime and should also have bespoken more sympathy for so religious a man, could hardly conceal their delight at the prospect of the removal of those worldly evils under which they were labouring. One of the leading manufacturers of Birmingham, a strict Dissenter, who had come up to London with petitions against the Orders in Council, lamented to me, with a demure countenance and a subdued voice, the wickedness of the times on which he had been cast, where, he said, as the coaches arrived in various parts of the kingdom, the intelligence of the murder of a fellow creature had been received with more exultation than horror, and even in some places greeted with savage shouts of un-Christian joy. “It is indeed disgusting; and yet,” added he, with an arch, puritanical smile, “it proves the sad condition of the poor manufacturers, and it cannot be denied that, in the present critical state of the question on the Orders in Council, the finger of a benevolent Providence is visible in this horrible event.”

The result, however, so confidently anticipated, would hardly have ensued had the vigilance and perseverance of Mr. Brougham been relaxed. He braved the censure of enemies and shocked the more timid and more gentle of his friends, by resolutely insisting, without regard to the feelings of individuals or the convenience of the Government, on the immediate relinquishment of the Orders in Council, before Mr. Perceval was cold in his grave or the arrangements for a new Ministry in any forwardness at Court. To that wise and firm, but at the same time somewhat odious conduct, the country is indebted for a revision of a system, unjust to other nations and ruinous to itself. Mr. Perceval had too much spirit to be intimidated, and too much bigotry to be convinced, by the clamour or the sufferings of the people. Had he lived, he would, no doubt, have persisted, at the peril of his own power, as well as of the prosperity of the kingdom, in the injudicious and violent measures he had from zeal and ignorance so hastily adopted.[134]

He was a man of principle, integrity, and courage; and though a bitter persecutor of such political and religious principles as he without much painful inquiry or dispassionate reflection disapproved, he was indulgent to his friends and liberal of his money. In business he was diligent, attentive, and distinct. It is true that even the eminent post he reached never enabled him to soar to the higher regions of eloquence; but in debate he was acute, judicious, and, above all, intrepid and ready. “He is not,” said Mr. Grattan, “a ship-of-the-line, but he carries many guns, is tight built, and is out in all weathers.” He had, indeed, the length, but was said not to have the learning, belonging to his profession. Prolixity was his great fault as a speaker; propensity to retaliation and attack his chief error as a Minister in Parliament. His virtues and his vices rendered him the most mischievous and dangerous man who had guided our councils for a century. Nothing but a dread that my words may be distorted into an attempt to palliate an atrocious crime makes me hesitate in pronouncing his death (as in my conscience I think it) a very fortunate event for the glory, happiness, and independence of my country. More changes were expected from it than actually took place.

In returning from the House of Lords I met Lord Grey, and took that early opportunity of expressing to him my sense of the importance of coming to an understanding with Lord Moira, Lord Wellesley, and Mr. Canning, before the Prince Regent had sent either to them or to us, and while we could negotiate a junction on the footing of perfect equality without the advantage on either side which an ostensible preference given by the Court would confer. He was by no means averse to a junction with any or all of them on honourable principles. He had no objection to speak to Lord Moira; but he doubted whether that was a proper moment for any negotiation with Mr. Canning, to whom I saw he retained much repugnance. He was yet more decidedly averse to making the first overture to him or to Lord Wellesley, from a notion of dignity to which I deferred, but which appeared to me to be mistaken and misplaced. He enjoined me to mention my notions to no one, and I obeyed him. Is it judging by the event, to attribute our subsequent exclusion from office to the want of such early understanding with the other public men then unemployed? Had we caught up and harnessed beforehand all the Ministers at grass, the Prince Regent could hardly have ventured in any conveyance but such as we had to offer him. I am, indeed, satisfied that _his_ chief object throughout was to prevent the admission of the Whigs to office. But if on applying to Lord Wellesley or Lord Moira, he had found those two noblemen in actual concert with the Whigs and bound in honour and inclined from interest and principle to act with them, he could scarcely have framed a proposal which would not have led either to a joint Administration, or to a union of many separate powers in an Opposition too formidable for the rump of Mr. Perceval’s Cabinet to encounter.

The Prince Regent began by directing Lord Liverpool to communicate with Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning on the means of strengthening the existing Administration, by associating to it persons who agreed most nearly and generally in the principles on which it had been conducted; but though he disclaimed all principles of exclusion, he authorised no proposal to persons connected with Opposition. This endeavour failed.[135] Mr. Canning, who waived all personal objections to Lord Castlereagh as Lord Castlereagh had also done to him, thought, however, that his personal and public character would incur a loss and the Government derive no strength, from his accession to a Ministry which resisted all consideration of the Catholic question after he had declared himself anxious to press that measure on Parliament and the public.

Lord Wellesley yet more pointedly declined any association with the Ministry, while their opinions on the laws affecting Roman Catholics remained unchanged. He apprehended too great a difference of sentiment on the conduct and management of the Peninsular war subsisted between him and Mr. Perceval’s colleagues, to render any renewal of connection with them in office advantageous to the public or acceptable to himself. He suggested at the end of his letter the propriety, necessity, and practicability of the admission of some of the Whigs into office; manifestly implying that the want of authority on that head was one of his objections to the commission of Lord Liverpool from the Prince Regent.[136]

Lord Wellesley was on this, and throughout the correspondence that ensued, more conciliatory to the Whigs than Mr. Canning. He was evidently more disposed to act with a party with whom he had never been connected, than with those from whom he had recently separated with some avowed, and more concealed, asperity and contempt. These feelings of animosity were considerably inflamed by the polemical tone he assumed in his correspondence, and yet more by the indecent haste with which he published his letters and answers. Lord Liverpool assured me that he read the letter to him of May 21, printed in the newspaper called the _Times_, before he had received, or at least before he had broken the seal of, the original. The scheme for strengthening the old Ministry being thus defeated, the opinion that it could not maintain itself grew more general.

Mr. Stuart Wortley,[137] a friend of Mr. Canning, though related to Lady Liverpool, moved the House of Commons on May 21 to address the Regent to, “form an efficient Administration.” Such motions, in substance and intention interfering in the choice of Ministers by the executive Government and always offensive to a Court, have been often negatived, when made by Whigs, as unconstitutional encroachments on the prerogative. Small middle parties and detached place-hunters, being factions who derive great advantage from an unlimited and uncontrolled choice of servants in the Crown, are almost invariably foremost in resisting them. On this occasion, however, the address to that purpose was moved by a Tory country gentleman, and was supported by Mr. Canning. The Whigs concurred with it, and it was carried by a majority of four. Ministers were compelled to tender their resignation, and the Prince Regent constrained to make some demonstration of an effort to supply their place.

If I were to attempt to thread the labyrinth of his intrigues and devices, my readers would be perplexed with the intricacy and weary of the length of the narrative. Some prominent facts are quite sufficient to detect the nature of the design, which was, to elude the wishes of the House of Commons, to preserve as nearly as possible the Administration then in power, to divide or to degrade any public men who had contributed to discomfit Mr. Perceval’s remaining colleagues, and to exclude all the Whigs, but more especially Lord Grey, from all share of power. To compass these ends, his first artifice was to authorise Lord Wellesley _to ascertain the views and dispositions of all parties with regard to certain principles, previously to the formation of any plans of Administration_, and _then_ to lay before him a plan for an Administration adapted to the crisis of affairs, but _not directly to form any Ministry_.[138]

The principles laid down by Lord Wellesley were,[139] first, that the Roman Catholic disabilities should be immediately considered with a view to a conciliatory adjustment; secondly, that the Peninsular war should be prosecuted with adequate vigour. He submitted them himself to Lord Grey; and Mr. Canning offered them at his suggestion to Lord Liverpool, because his recent discussions with that Minister had produced so much ill blood that the intervention of a third person was deemed by Lord Wellesley to be more judicious and acceptable. But Lord Liverpool, in his own name and that of all his colleagues except Lord Melville, drily declined the proposal of becoming members of any Administration formed by Lord Wellesley, and thought, after all that had passed with his Lordship, that it was unnecessary to enter into any discussion of the principles he had submitted to them. Lord Melville answered in a separate memorandum. He was not less peremptory in his personal objections to Lord Wellesley, but to the principles he had suggested he felt none.

The answer of Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, adopted after due deliberation with their friends, Lords Lansdowne and Lauderdale, Messrs. Ponsonby, Tierney, and myself, was in substance as follows: an assurance of a disposition to give effect to the late vote of the House of Commons by the abandonment of every personal object; an unqualified promise of supporting any proposal made by any Ministers for the conciliatory adjustment of the Roman Catholic claims, with a warm compliment to Lord Wellesley for his powerful exertions in that cause; and a cautious postponement of all opinion on the more or less vigorous prosecution of the Peninsular war, as a question not of principle but of policy, to be regulated by temporary and fluctuating circumstances on which out of office it was impossible for them to pronounce. To this, however, was added an expression of doubt how far any increase of expenditure was practicable.

This paper, justly denominated by Mr. Ponsonby a “safe” answer, and as justly considered by Lord Wellesley as a favourable and conciliatory one, was delivered to the Prince Regent on May 24. On receiving it, and _before he had read it_, he exclaimed, “_What! a refusal?_” After reading it, and on being told by Lord Wellesley that it was satisfactory in that stage of the business, he gave him no authority to proceed, but professed to take time to consider of it. He employed that time in devising arguments to distort the answer into a refusal, in calumniating Lord Grey, in attempts to detach Mr. Canning from Lord Wellesley or to prevail on both to join the old Ministry, and in alarming Lord Liverpool and the Duke of York with the prospect of his rage at the Whigs and his vexation at his embarrassments terminating in madness. During this period of anger and intrigue, in which he frequently saw Mr. Sheridan, he urged the old Ministry to stand their ground and brave the House of Commons; and he pressed Lord Moira to form an Administration, without apprising Lord Wellesley—whose commission, however, he maintained, was only suspended and not concluded. Lord Moira prudently declined; but when the circumstance reached Lord Wellesley it confirmed the suspicions he had begun to harbour of the Regent’s insincerity, and furnished him with fresh motives for exacting, when subsequently employed by His Royal Highness, some more specific power and instructions than he had hitherto obtained. Displeased at discovering that the old Ministers, on the plea of retaining _pro tempore_ their offices, had long and frequent audiences of the Prince Regent, he and Lord Moira offered to hold the seals of office till some Administration should be formed. That offer was not accepted.

_T. Phillips, R.A. Pinx. 1812._

_Emery Walker Ph. Sc._]

In the meanwhile Lord Moira extracted from Lord Grey an explanation, or rather an accurate statement, of what he had said in the House of Lords on the disappointment of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, with the friendly view of satisfying the Prince that no personal affront to him had been offered or intended on that occasion.

The firmness of Lord Wellesley, the intervention of Lord Moira, and the opinion of others, especially the Duke of York and Lord Egremont[140] (the latter of whom avowed much political dislike to the two Lords, yet concurred in representing the services of both as essentially necessary to the country), at length prevailed on His Royal Highness with a bad grace to authorise Lord Wellesley to enter on a negotiation not only with Lord Grenville, but with Lord Grey, to whom he had chiefly taken an exception. In yielding, however, to this advice, he contrived to clog his offer with conditions, which he had the sagacity to foresee that the prudence or the high spirit of those with whom he negotiated would instantly reject. He did not direct Lord Wellesley to discuss measures and arrangements with the two Lords, but he directed him to annex as a condition and to stipulate that Lord Moira, Lord Erskine, and Mr. Canning should be members of the Cabinet;[141] and that to a Ministry so constituted they should recommend a certain number of members limited by previous arrangement or order from His Royal Highness.

Lord Wellesley, in delivering this proposal, intimated that Lord Melville should also be invited to a seat in the new Cabinet; that the Great Seal should be offered to Sir William Grant;[142] and that the Prince Regent would be gratified at Lord Eldon, though deprived of the Seal, being still retained in the Cabinet. To this proposal a refusal was drawn up by Lord Grenville and Lord Grey, and cordially approved of by all their leading friends in both Houses of Parliament. The grounds of their objections were strongly but respectfully stated to be a conviction that the plan was formed on a principle of disunion, that the proceeding was in itself novel and inconvenient, and the tendency of it would be to establish in the Cabinet itself a system of counteraction inconsistent with the prosecution of any uniform or beneficial course of policy.

On June 3 Lord Wellesley reported the failure of his negotiations, and recommended that some further explanations should be given; but he was informed by the Prince Regent that his powers had now ceased, and his commission was withdrawn. Lord Wellesley lost no time in informing the public, through the House of Lords, that his commission had been revoked; and in the course of his speech lamented that, “personal animosities, dreadful personal animosities,” had stood in the way of any advantageous and amicable arrangement. This strong phrase was applied by the public to the Prince Regent’s prejudices against Lord Grey; but when both Lord Moira and Lord Grenville acquitted Lord Wellesley of having meant any imputation on the Prince, and Lord Boringdon ascribed it, in Lord Wellesley’s absence, very awkwardly to inadvertence, the spirited little Marquis returned to the House, and, not satisfied with disclaiming the false meaning annexed in his words, declared explicitly that they studiously intended to stigmatise, and did, in truth, accurately describe, the feelings and conduct of the old Ministers towards him. A warm altercation ensued, in which Lord Wellesley expressed his scorn of his late colleagues in language which, if they had not then the wit to repel or confute, they afterwards showed they had the memory to retain and the disposition not easily to forgive.[143] Lord Moira, satisfied that all the above negotiations had failed from a misunderstanding, was still desirous to rectify it. With that view he sought opportunities of conversing, and wrote one or two notes to Lords Grey and Grenville, who civilly but distinctly declined pursuing the subject by unauthorised discussions. He was then furnished with full powers, and had an interview with the two Lords at his house in St. James’s Place on June 6, 1812.

To that interview it must be acknowledged that the two Lords went but ill prepared to bring matters to an amicable issue, and with some inclination, from a prospect of fresh and reviving embarrassments, to seize any plausible pretence for declining the proffered boon. Even had they been otherwise able to form an Administration, they had, from delicacy or from indolence, neglected to come to any agreement between themselves on some of the most important points connected with such arrangements. The Regent did not conceal his personal dislike to Lord Grey. To have selected him for the Treasury—an office which he never held, and which would have brought him more than any other into personal intercourse with the Regent—would certainly have provoked the indignation of the Court, and might, with some plausibility, be construed into an insult on the feelings of the Prince Regent. On the other hand, Lord Grenville had no disposition to surrender his auditorship, and our Parliamentary friends had still less to approve of his retaining it with the Treasury.[144] No third plan had been devised. Lord Moira had not, like Lord Wellesley, avowed a determination not to accept the Treasury. There were, indeed, circumstances, arising from the embarrassed state of his private affairs and his too compliant temper, which would have disqualified him for that office; but they were in their nature not very easy to be urged to him, and no plan not liable to inconvenience could be suggested in lieu of one, which, but for the objections alluded to, so obviously presented itself.

These difficulties, together with Lord Grey’s distrust of the Regent and Lord Grenville’s concealed, but not unreasonable, discontent with our parliamentary friends, indisposed both those Lords to any amicable termination of the negotiation. When, therefore, at the outset, Lord Moira refused to acquiesce in any removal of the great officers of the Household, or even to recognise the propriety of vesting any power of removing them in the Cabinet, they peremptorily declined accepting office with any such restriction; though Lord Moira was at great pains to assure them that the stipulation was entirely his own, and did not come from the Prince Regent.

The two Lords, no doubt, thought such a condition a less indelicate and more plausible ground of rupture, than others which they foresaw must arise in discussing the detail of arrangements. Unquestionably, as a ground of rejection, it had some advantages; it covered weaknesses in their own party, it screened them from the imputation of personal jealousies of those with whom they were to act; but, on the other hand, it did not expose the insincerity of the Court so manifestly as further progress in the negotiation might have done, and, like all pretexts contrived to keep out of sight the real motives of action, it rendered their conduct somewhat unintelligible to the public. They had, indeed, the satisfaction to find it approved by their House of Commons friends, with the exception of Mr. Whitbread, and by all their chief supporters in the Lords without one dissentient voice. Lord Darlington,[145] who had originally joined the Whigs through the influence of Carlton House, declared that had they acted otherwise they would have lost his support. Even Lord Erskine, who had endeavoured to render them more compliant, joined our meeting of June 7 at Lord Grenville’s, with an assurance that he would contribute to form no middle or neutral Administration, but “die in the political connection in which he had hitherto lived.” To this gallant determination, the conduct of Lord Moira, which afterwards reached my ears, may possibly have contributed. He had a few hours before informed Lord Erskine that in the Administration he was then projecting he intended to offer him the Presidentship, and not the Seals, which he destined to Sir William Grant. With an equal want of dexterity he had, about the same time, called on Lord Eldon to apprise him, as an old private friend, that he had no intention of offering him anything in his new Administration.

When Lord Wellesley had made some progress in his negotiations with the Whig Lords, and when he thought his project, though in its actual shape declined, might be so modified as to lead to an accommodation, the Prince Regent first suspended and then cancelled his powers. When Lord Moira had entirely failed in his negotiation and peremptorily rejected the principles on which alone the two Whig Lords would enter upon treaty, His Royal Highness continued his powers, and left him at liberty to form a Ministry of which he was quite satisfied the two obnoxious Lords would not be a part. Lord Moira was, indeed, sanguine. He hoped to form a Ministry, even though the Whigs refused to co-operate with him, without having recourse to the late Ministers, whom he continued to term “those fellows.” His first step was to offer Mr. Canning a seat in the Cabinet and a share in the arrangements for filling it. Mr. Canning, with certain conditions and reserves, accepted the offer. Lord Moira then commissioned Mr. Canning to persuade Lord Liverpool (a prominent Member of the late Cabinet, and consequently one of the “fellows” described by Lord Moira) to accede to his Ministry, which was nevertheless to be formed on a principle favourable to Catholic Emancipation.

This proposal Lord Liverpool naturally declined. He added that he had neither by word nor deed counteracted the object of the veto of [the] House of Commons for a new Ministry; and he somewhat carefully qualified his opinion on the Catholic question by observing that, although he should always vote against the measure, he was not precluded from supporting or even acting with a Ministry favourable to some further concessions to the Roman Catholics provided he, in other respects, concurred in their general politics. Lord Moira was not discouraged by Lord Liverpool’s refusal. He consulted Mr. Sheridan, but he offered him no seat in the Cabinet; he sent up express for Mr. Whitbread, entertained some strange hopes of that gentleman taking office, and gave him in return yet stranger, of Government espousing the cause of Parliamentary reform.

In the meanwhile he had authorised Mr. Canning to find four Cabinet Ministers, including himself. He spoke of the Duke of Norfolk and Lords Hardwicke, Erskine, and Egremont as four others on whom he (Lord Moira) could rely for active co-operation.[146] Few hours elapsed before Mr. Canning learnt that three of the above-mentioned Lords had declined every offer; and that Lord Egremont had never been consulted by Lord Moira, but only quoted by the Prince Regent as a man whose reluctance to take office he could, in case of great emergency, overrule. After sundry other meetings, which seemed devised for no practical purpose whatever, Lord Moira presented at Carlton House the meagre list of names suggested rather than procured by Mr. Canning.[147] The Prince Regent, glancing his eye carelessly over them, exclaimed: “You see, my dear Moira, they are chiefly Pittites; so the best way is to make up with the present men, and you may settle it all with Eldon and Liverpool, _who are waiting in the adjoining room_.” Lord Moira took his leave. The matter was as easily settled without him by the statesmen in waiting, and in ten minutes Lord Liverpool kissed hands as First Lord of the Treasury.

It was understood, on this revival of the old Ministry, that Government, as such, was to take no part on the Catholic question: that a subject, which had agitated the public for years, was to be considered by those who directed the councils of the nation as matter of indifference, on which they were not to concert any line of conduct whatever. Persons in office were to give their votes on that question, without paying or exacting any deference or compliance from their colleagues or subordinate officers. The only accession to the Ministry consisted of Lord Sidmouth and some few of his friends.[148]

Thus an address moved by a partisan of Mr. Canning,[149] and carried by the assistance of the Whigs, for the purpose of forcing either or both into the Cabinet, terminated by riveting those against whom it was directed more securely than ever in power, and procuring a share of it to the only faction in Parliament which had concurred in resisting the motion. Lord Liverpool assured me that he had been on the point of setting off on a tour on the Wye, and that from the period of the vote in [the] Commons to the failure of Lord Moira’s negotiations with Lord Grey, he had never directly nor indirectly obstructed the formation of a new, or endeavoured to preserve, the old Administration. I gave and give full credit to his assertion, and, with the exception of Lord Eldon, I believe the same might be said of most of his colleagues. Strong disinclination to office in the two Whig Lords; perhaps some little tincture of pride, mingled with manners unconciliatory to strangers; the unsurmountable barrier of opinion on the Catholic question between many of the parties concerned; the secret contrivances of Sheridan to make his power felt; the generous but somewhat unintelligible endeavour of Lord Moira to screen the Regent from all odium; and above all the private determination of the latter, steadily pursued through many byways and winding paths, to exclude the Whigs and Lord Grey in particular—were the real causes which defeated the formation of a new Ministry.

The Regent, to mark his satisfaction with Lord Moira, threw the Collar of St. George round his neck and embraced him with tears; which, it is whispered, His Royal Highness has the prerogative of shedding at pleasure. Lord Moira was soon afterwards named Governor-General of India.[150] Though the tool of others’ duplicity, and, in some measure, the dupe of his own refinements in loyalty, his motives were friendly to the Whigs, honest to the country, kind to the Prince, and creditable to his own character on the score of generosity but not of sagacity.

I have been minute in relating the above transactions. The secret motives of the parties were not obvious to distant observers, and much misunderstood at the time. The statements made in the House of Lords never reached the public. Even if they had, little would have been learnt from them. On one occasion, Lord Grey having characterised Lord Moira’s character as chivalrous, Moira understood the phrase as a reflection on his understanding. A debate ensued, which their respective, or rather common, friends were better pleased to leave without intelligible comment than to prolong at the hazard of a quarrel. The negotiations expose the hostility of the Prince Regent to the Whigs. They thereby furnish a clue to his previous proceedings and an explanation of his subsequent conduct. They discover the relations in which parties stood to one another; and thereby exhibit a picture of the politics of the time, and portraits of those most prominent in them.

Writers have often represented such negotiations as little more or less than a barefaced scramble for places, a contest of ambition in some few, and of avarice in more. In those I have witnessed there has been generally among leading statesmen much less appetite for office, much less ambition and avarice, than more respectable passions. In that here related, not only Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, but Lord Wellesley, Mr. Canning, and even Lord Liverpool, seem throughout to have foregone the prospect of place and power for a creditable and sometimes an overstrained and fastidious regard to character and consistency. Every one of them might have obtained office by the sacrifice either of connections or opinions. Possibly they were reprehensible for some portion of pride, vanity, or resentment; but nobody with an appearance of reason could impute to any one of them, on this occasion, either an inordinate desire of power or a grovelling passion for place or emolument.

The adulation bestowed on living Princes is disgusting; the admiration for high station and rank, common to most, and especially to professional men, is adverse to the cause of truth and often ridiculous. The habit of ascribing great designs and elevated motives to all the actions of public characters, so prevalent in courtly writers, is not only false and foolish but mischievous. On the other hand, the passion in which vulgar minds indulge of levelling all public characters to their own standard, and branding indiscriminately the leaders and followers of all parties with the meanest selfishness, is equally false, nearly as foolish, and much more mischievous. Far from showing sagacity, it betrays an ignorance of mankind as well as malignity of disposition. Instead of deterring men from corruption by the exposure of vice, it extinguishes one of the strongest incentives to virtue, posthumous fame; and it reconciles the world to the practice of iniquity by representing it to be universal and unavoidable.

The re-establishment of the old Ministry under Lord Liverpool was a new epoch. I defer the relation of the remaining events of the year and the Session of 1812 to another chapter.

INTRODUCTION TO BOOK THE THIRD

It seemed unlikely that Lord Liverpool’s Administration, composed almost entirely of men of second-rate ability and slender talent, would have a long existence when pitted against the full strength of the Whig Party. The Cabinet was divided on more than one of the leading questions of the day, and though they could now rely with certainty on the steady support of the Prince Regent, it seemed doubtful whether they would long remain in power.

Lord Holland states that the Government obtained some popularity from the successes of the British armies in the Peninsula; and certainly Wellington’s victories were a forcible argument against the petitions and motions in Parliament urging the re-establishment of peace. That General decisively defeated Marmont in July, 1812, at Salamanca, and advanced to Madrid. Though the result of this step politically was most opportune, he was unable to maintain his position in the Spanish capital, and was forced to retire to Portugal before the advance of the French armies. Appointed Commander-in-Chief during the winter he took the field with renewed vigour in 1813. The French, dismayed at the news of their Emperor’s disastrous retreat from Moscow, were concentrated early in the spring, and commenced their retreat behind the Ebro. Wellington hurried in pursuit, defeated Joseph in a pitched battle at Vittoria, and continued his advance with such success that he entered France at the head of the Allied armies early in October.

Napoleon’s preparations for the campaign which he determined should finally bring the whole Continent under his sway were on a scale up to that time unknown in the history of the world. It will be remembered that Austria and Prussia were bound by treaty to assist him, should he require their aid. He forced them to fulfil their contract, and exacted both men and money to assist him in the furtherance of his schemes. The French armies crossed the Russian frontiers in June, 1812. Alexander, who had hurriedly made peace with the Porte, could collect but half the number of troops required to oppose the invader on even terms. Chance rather than any settled plan of action governed the fortunes of the Russian forces, which retreated before the advance of Napoleon. So far everything was successful; but the organisation of the French transport had been found wanting early in the campaign, and after the obstinately contested battle of Borodino and the occupation of Moscow, Napoleon realised that it would be an impossibility to maintain his troops in winter near that town. Orders for retreat were given; hunger and cold did their worst; every step was closely dogged by the Russian armies; and of the 480,000 men who entered Russia, little more than 20,000 returned.

Intelligence of the French disasters was sent by the Russians to General von York, who commanded the Prussian troops under French orders at Riga. After some hesitation, divining the inclinations of the nation, he threw in his lot with the Russians, though King Frederick William had up to that time given no sign of any rupture with Napoleon. He was encouraged, however, by Alexander’s successful pursuit of the French, and declared war against France in March, 1813. Napoleon, who had left the disordered remnant of his army early in December, made superhuman efforts in France to raise fresh troops for service in Germany. His endeavours were crowned with success; but the young levy, unused to the exigencies of warfare, were in no way to be compared to the veterans whose lives he had ruthlessly sacrificed in the previous campaign. The opening phases of the conflict were favourable to the French, and had Napoleon seized his opportunity after the battle of Bautzen, he could have obtained peace on sufficiently advantageous terms. But his ever-increasing ambition proved his ruin, and a conviction that the Austrian Court would remain faithful to him blinded him to the true facts of the case. That nation was indeed wavering, and Metternich, the guiding star of its foreign policy, had already perceived that Napoleon was insatiable in his demands, and that a fresh appeal to arms was inevitable. Austria joined the Allies early in August, and a series of battles took place, culminating in the defeat of Napoleon at Leipsic and his retirement to France. After the decisive result of this campaign, conditions of peace were again offered by the Allies, but no definite answer was received, and the offer was withdrawn early in December.

The invasion of France commenced early in January, 1814, before Napoleon, who had lost the services of a numerous body of men left in Germany to garrison the fortresses, had gained time to collect fresh troops. It is probable that he might still have retained the throne of France, had he frankly accepted the terms offered at Chatillon in February; but Caulaincourt, the French plenipotentiary, was afraid of signing a treaty which he knew would be disavowed in the event of a French success, and the opportunity was lost for ever.

The Congress of Chatillon broke up without arriving at any decided agreement as to the future settlement of France. The Allies resolved to advance to Paris, and they entered that city on March 31. Napoleon made several skilful attempts to bar their progress; but the disgust of the French nation at the continuance of war, the treachery of his generals, and the hopeless numerical inferiority of his forces, made any permanent success an impossibility. A provisional Government was proclaimed in Paris under Talleyrand, Napoleon was dethroned and sent to Elba, and the Bourbons were recalled to the throne in the person of Louis XVIII.

Wellington, in the south, paused for some months after reaching the frontiers of France in October, 1813, till the senseless intrigues of King Ferdinand, whom Napoleon had allowed to return to Spain, made the British commander’s position somewhat insecure. He resumed operations early in February. Soult was unable to withstand his advance, and the continued British successes closed with the hard-earned battle of Toulouse—a useless sacrifice of 8,000 lives, for Napoleon had abdicated six days before. Wellington, who had accepted the post of British Ambassador in Paris, reached that city early in May, in time to be present at the conclusion of the definitive treaty.

By this treaty, briefly, France retained what was practically her frontier in 1792, without the exaction of any indemnity; Switzerland became a republic; Holland, Spain, Westphalia, Tuscany, and Piedmont were restored to their respective sovereigns; while other outstanding questions of importance were deferred for discussion at a Congress to be held at Vienna within two months.

On the completion of their task, the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia proceeded to England to pay a visit of congratulation to the Prince Regent; but the Emperor of Austria was obliged to return to his own dominions. London was _en fête_, and great crowds received the monarchs enthusiastically, and everywhere accompanied their progress during their stay in the country. It was about this time that rumours were heard of the approaching marriage of the Princess Charlotte of Wales, then in her seventeenth year, to the Prince of Orange, eldest son of the newly made King of Holland. The probability of the arrangement was universally believed; but the negotiations were broken off, and she married within two years Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.

War broke out between England and the United States, in the summer of 1812, over the question of the British Orders in Council. The struggle lasted with varying success for two years and a half. By sea the Americans more than held their own; but their attempted invasions of Canada met with no success. Peace was concluded by the Treaty of Ghent early in 1815, much to the delight of both countries.